


a cost-benefit analysis on inter-team fraternization

by kuruk



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, Middle School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 08:10:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1975500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuruk/pseuds/kuruk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d jotted down GOOD INSIDE SOURCE FOR HATOGAYA in Sakaeguchi’s favor before he reminded himself that Hatogaya hadn’t even made it past the first round of the regional tournament the year before, so he appended VERY LIMITED UTILITY for the sake of clarification. Below it was what logically followed: HATOGAYA SPY? dutifully written in overthick characters, this particular item underlined with such frequency that the lines had metamorphosed into one, misshapen blot of blue ink. The transcription accurately conveyed the gravity of what was a very real possibility, he decided, and thoughtfully filled in two more lines.</p><p>[Abe and Sakaeguchi run into each other at the convenience store and their middle school computer lab—and strike up...an acquaintanceship. Sort of.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	a cost-benefit analysis on inter-team fraternization

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cephea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cephea/gifts).



> First of all, I am so incredibly sorry for how late I am in finishing this fic for you. It took on a life of its own and mutated into a monster...but that's one of the reasons I want to thank you. For all my ruminating over people to throw Abe Takaya at, I never once considered Sakaeguchi! So thank you, musard, for your wonderful request; it caught my eye immediately! I love exploring canon divergences and rarepairs (and the egg thief), so this fic was nothing short of a joy to write. I can only hope that the reading experience is similarly enjoyable...!
> 
> Special and effusive thanks to transversely, who proofread, edited, helped me figure this thing out and determine whether or not I should attempt approaching the portentous intersection of purple-and-gray instead, Nona, for proofreading and reassuring me at my lowest point in the process, Reo, for her invaluable writing advice and ideas, and khepria, who has been a constant source of commiseration and mutual support. It truly takes a village to write something like this, and I am so fortunate to call these extraordinary individuals my friends. I'm very grateful to you all; I could not have done this without you.
> 
> Please enjoy!

Three days before their game against Shinei, what was supposed to be a slider sped clear over Abe’s outstretched glove on its trajectory to slam into his chest protector instead, knocking him out of his crouch and smashing the breath out of him with its unexpected force. He wheezed, set his teeth, and shut his eyelids tight until his abdominal muscles loosened. That hadn’t been a slider at all, but a straight. It shouldn’t have been a straight; it was supposed to be a slider. He’d _signed for it!_ —was all he could incredulously think to tell Haruna as he strained to sit up, but Shinohara, their starting catcher, was already calling for everyone to wrap up the bullpen session.

“Wait!” Abe said, suppressing the need to cough. “I still have—four pitches left!”

“It’s okay, Takaya,” said Shinohara. “You know coach wants you to take it easy after stuff like this happens. Go ice that before it starts to bruise.”

Except things like that—that slider didn’t just _happen_ , he wanted to say, they didn’t! There were very clear causes. Causes that could be pinpointed and rectified! When it had been _Abe’s_ own fault when they were first paired together and _his_ deficit of skill and reflexes that prevented him from catching Haruna’s pitches, _he_ had put in the time and practice to learn how, and there were results! Measurable ones, quantifiable ones (such as: it may have been the third time Haruna’s pitching had caught him off-guard during their bullpen session on that particular day, but it was only the _first_ time in almost a whole _week_ that it’d bowled him over like that—numbers like that didn’t just _happen_ , they were the results of his pinpointing and rectifying errors, which Shinohara would _know_ if he had the acumen it took to catch for a pitcher like Haruna.)

And that was what batteries were all about. What made his position the coolest and most demanding to play: the whole game would amount to nothing if he didn’t put in the work to formulate sound pitch-calling strategies. Ones that accounted for the sloppy sliders. Those and other egregious deficiencies, all so the opponents’ offensive lineup wouldn’t get the chance to exploit them and steal preventable hits off unsigned-for straights that should have been sliders, which was exactly what he was trying to do with what little time he had to do it! given that in the bullpen Haruna only gave him ten to fifteen pitches or ten minutes of his time, whichever expired first, so how could he possibly make Haruna improve when presumptuous starting catchers like Shinohara ended bullpen practice early on top of every other ridiculous condition he was accommodating.

But he didn’t voice it. By the time he managed to sit up, Haruna had already gone from the marker they used as makeshift mounds in the bullpen. From there, his words wouldn’t carry. Didn’t, as it happened, when they were stationed across from one another in the bullpen, with only fourteen paces between them. It certainly wouldn’t be of any use to say any of it right then. Abe ducked his head, lifted his mask. With a quick glance at Shinohara to make sure he wasn’t looking at him, he blotted away the moisture around his eyes with his knuckle. In a few minutes, Abe would close that distance. Explain how vital it was to work on their leading, one more time, so that maybe he would be understood, this time. Right then and there, he grunted his assent so Shinohara could hear it, and stood up.

His throat ached with the crispness of the air every time he breathed in. Spring had come early that year, though the afternoon still retained enough of a chill to forestall most serious talk about the upcoming tournaments. After training inside the gymnasium for the duration of the winter, the prospect of a practice game charged the field with an anticipation usually reserved for the ones that actually mattered. Their game against Shinei would be their second of the new year. Another opportunity to try their battery against another team, and move forward from there.

With everyone else still practicing outside, the locker room was cooler than the field had been. Its air hung thick, emptied out as it was. Goosebumps rose along Abe’s arms as he undid the straps on his gear as gingerly as he could, mindful of the new ache coiled in his abdomen. After setting it down in his locker, he made his way toward the freezer.

It was there that Haruna approached him, emerging from behind a row of lockers to stand a few feet away. Laughing at him, no doubt. The freezer’s hinges creaked. Abe set his jaw. The fastball had almost dislodged the words he’d meant for Haruna, but the dull pain it left in its wake clogged them instead.

Let him start talking to me, Abe thought. It’s not my fault this time. I’m trying—trying to win. 

“Haven’t seen you mess up that bad in a while,” Haruna finally said. His tone was conversational, not mirthful, but that was typical of him too, wasn’t it. Casual when he should be taking him—taking things seriously. Focused on his future to the exclusion of matters that demanded his best effort in the present. When his attention ought to have been on what was at his disposal to accomplish them. A strong team, games to win. A good battery.

“I wasn’t ready for a straight,” he said. “I signed for a slider.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not my fault. I warned you about what would happen if you expected me to follow those signs of yours. You ought to listen from now on.”

“I’m not scared.” 

You said so yourself, he didn’t say.

Haruna took a deep breath. “Fine. That doesn’t mean you have to act stupid about this though.”

“It’s not stupid.” He reared his head back to look up at Haruna, who had a towel hanging off his neck and was cupping the back of his head with both palms, arms raised to only about half the height they were mid-windup motion. “Calling the game is the most important thing a catcher _does_ , Motoki-san! You can’t just throw whatever you want at a batter and expect them to strikeout. Without showing the batters some variety, they’ll get used to your fastball by the second time through the lineup, and—” 

He stopped, because Haruna had lowered his arms to stare at his left hand with a focus he reserved for surveying threats to his own person (a pitch count approaching eighty, deviations from his personalized training menu, and, once, one of the worn wooden bats their coach had distributed before training, ostensibly so they could get a feel for how the pros batted, which Abe had watched Haruna rebuff on the basis that it would give him splinters). Presently, the look was directed at something on his finger Abe couldn’t make out at all from this angle. “Hey, Takaya,” Haruna said slowly, “what’s this look like to you?” 

He bent over a little and showed Abe the pad of his index finger.

Taken aback by the suddenness of the gesture, Abe could only stare at Haruna’s proffered finger for a long moment,finally noticing the small reddish line barely noticeable against his skin. “A papercut…?”

Haruna retracted his hand and grimaced. “Damn.” 

He was staring at his finger with affronted surprise, as though he had reason to believe it’d conspired to inflict the wound with whichever sheet of paper had been the perpetrator and was equally culpable for it. That, or perhaps he was just disappointed in his own lack of caution. 

Abe’s grip loosened around the lip of the freezer, tightened again. Maybe this was the first time something like that had happened to him. Was he even prepared? He wondered if Haruna had proper first aid supplies with him. Abe carried a kit of his own in his duffel bag, of course. He could help. It would be a simple procedure, but instructional, which could create an opportunity for talking to him about the leading issue again, only more effectively this time— 

“Damn,” Haruna repeated.

“You’ll be fine if you put some medicated ointment and a bandage on it, Motoki-san. It’s just a papercut.”

“Yeah…” said Haruna morosely. 

Abe watched as he straightened, still clearly unconvinced. It occurred to him then that he should shut the freezer and fetch his first aid kit from his bag. The ice could wait.

“We could practice some more once we’ve taken care of that. Shinohara ended the bullpen session early, but we have four pitches left for the day. If you asked him, Motoki-san, he couldn’t say no—”

Haruna was looking at Abe the way he had at the old, splintering bat. “I can’t pitch like this.” His tone bristled with reproach. “I _won’t_ pitch like this. Not until my finger heals.”

“But Shinei—”

Haruna scowled. “What about it? You didn’t think I’d get on the mound for that in this condition, did you? Besides, it’s just a practice game.”

“It’s not—it’s not a ‘condition’ that—that merits staying off the mound. Not when we still have to work on our pitch-calling. The game is in three days. There’s only so much we can learn from practicing in the bullpen, Motoki-san, we have to keep playing in real games if we want to get better—”

“Whatever. You don’t get it. It’ll mess with the way the ball leaves my hand, and compensating for it could screw up my elbow. You don’t know how a wound on your pitching hand can affect your—I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

“A papercut isn’t a _wound_ , Motoki-san!”

“Shut up! What do you know? I’m not pitching!”

He closed his eyes and imagined himself in the catcher’s box, facing Haruna as he started his windup motion. Arms raised overhead, leg cocked and bent at the knee. The lowering of his arms: the force of what was to come apparent, like the backswing of a trebuchet. A step forward, then—then…

“Fine,” he said at last. He was gripping the freezer so tightly his hand was trembling. 

The look Haruna shot him before leaving plainly that this was all Abe’s fault and nothing to do with him. When he was gone Abe reached into the freezer for the ice he’d come to get. The cold hardly biting at his fingers at all when he fumbled a jagged chunk into his palm. His hands had already gone numb.

— . . . —

As expected and despite all Abe’s insistence to the contrary, their coach sent him home from practice early (“Takaya-kun, go home. Be sure to eat a good dinner and soak that bruise in the bath. Rest well. We need you in top shape for the game—”).

The conversation was futile enough without telling him about the papercut incident and how their ace had determined it would preclude the two of them from playing in the game at all, but the thought of trying to explain Haruna’s inanities to another person was exhausting. Their coach spoke to _Motoki-kun_ ‘supportively’ and ‘understandingly,’ which struck Abe as a needlessly fancy way to describe an approach just this side of sycophancy. So he sullenly inclined his head and walked back into the locker room to grab his things.

The plastic bag he had filled with ice was wedged too precariously between his undershirt and the tender spot on his abdomen for biking home, so he walked, pausing every other moment to adjust the bag’s position when his movements jostled it out of place. Slowgoing, and though there was a good wind, the back of his throat was all the drier for it. 

He came to the convenience store that marked the halfway point home some fifteen minutes later than he ordinarily would have and stopped to consider the building. Palmed the ice bag back into place on the way in, he assured himself it made for good training—if he could refrain from giving any outward indication of his discomfort in this situation, there was nothing stopping him from replicating a similar poker face effect during games that would surely unnerve even the most self-assured power-hitters, obviously a vital component of any pitch-calling strategy, _absolutely vital_ —and walked inside, cored by the numbing cold pinned over his abdomen. The store was relatively empty at this hour. On his way back to the front with a milk tea he scanned the magazine shelves (if his thorough searches through various players’ discussion forums hadn’t yielded any relevant results, he doubted the store’s paltry collection of baseball magazines would have anything illuminating to offer about his ‘situation,’ but the thought of inaction irked him). He stomped past a boy browsing the manga shelves, set his milk tea down on the linoleum, and snatched up the latest issue of _Weekly Baseball_.

The sound came in fits and starts at first. Gradually it became apparent that it was snickering, and then more of a sustained chuckling. 

His eyes unfocused from the page. In his peripheral vision, it looked like the manga boy was glancing at him. Abe shot him an irritated sidelong glance. There was a volume in his hands, mostly ignored, and earbuds hanging out of his ears. Spying and chortling at Abe seemed to interest him more, though he looked away quickly for a moment when he saw that Abe had noticed him,. Something about him seemed familiar. Maybe from school? It was difficult to tell for sure; there were so many people he went to school with.

While he considered this, the other boy closed the manga, removed one earbud, and turned to face him.

“Um. Excuse me?” 

Yes, he was definitely familiar. It was an impersonal familiarity; not recognition of any one feature, but of their amalgamation, someone seen more than once without particular notice. But he had a much easier time placing the orange insignia embroidered over the brim of his cap: Hatogaya, another team in the Senior League.

“Sorry, sorry,” said the boy, “but you’re—you’re dripping water all over the floor.”

Sure enough, the aisle was dotted with puddles from the coolers to the magazine rack. The puddle nearest to him was darkening a large patch of his shirt and the waistband of his pants intead. He stared down at this in numb shock. He hadn’t felt the leak.

“Sorry,” the boy said again, watching as he lifted the dripping bag of melted ice out from under his shirt. He set his manga down and followed him to the nearest trashcan. “You were icing an injury, right? That’s…pretty sensible. Really! It’s lucky you’re wearing black. Here, let me help you.” He procured a few paper napkins from the nearby self-serve soda counter’s dispenser and handed them to Abe, who took them bewilderedly.

“Thanks….”

“No problem. You’re in Class Four, aren’t you?”

Abe was wadding the napkins up. “Yeah.” He blotted at the wet stain on his shirt with his handful of napkins, before pressing down and rubbing at it haphazardly. When he pulled back to inspect his progress, he found the stain itself unchanged, though now there were small pieces of wet napkin stuck to the cloth.

The other boy was audibly making an effort not to laugh at him again. His cheeks were flushed, and his lips were tightly compressed. He snorted, but tried muffling it with a cough. “Ah...I’m—um.” His mouth twitched. “I’m in Class Two,” he managed to get out. “Sa-Sakaeguchi. It’s nice to—to finally meet the other schoolmate who’s in the Seniors too.”

“Oh. Oh—of course. I’ve heard of you. Yes. Likewise.”

He had. Secondhand, from some first year boys on the school team who had gathered round him during lunch period, once, to press him for details. _What’s it like in the seniors?_ they’d asked. _Isn’t batting at hardballs scary?_ And, above all, _You and Sakaeguchi-kun must be amazing…!_ exclaimed breathlessly after each of his answers. Every expression of admiration addressed to the both of them. Always lumped together with this ‘Sakaeguchi-kun,’ who Abe _didn’t_ know but had searched for in the data Todakita had compiled on Hatogaya, though there wasn’t very much of it (a reasonable oversight for such a weak team; they weren’t Minami Asagaya, which had an ever-thickening manilla folder of hand-tallied data sheets chronicling their games in coach’s office, why waste their parents’ time filming Hatogaya’s games? best not to bother them). But the lapse had bothered Abe, though he understood the rationale behind it, so he had considered volunteering to film a game or two of theirs himself, as much for caution’s sake as the opportunity to get a sheet of his own into the cabinet—the first of many, to be certain. Or at least he had, before that first bullpen session with Haruna had cut his work out for him so forcefully.

It had never occurred to him that this ‘Sakaeguchi-kun’ may have been in the class two rooms away all along. Or that he frequented this particular convenience store. Of course, he hadn’t thought to do more than search the file cabinet.

“Me too,” Sakaeguchi was saying. “It’s Abe, right? I thought I recognized you from school, and when I saw your hat—” he gestured at Abe’s own cap, which he was wearing backwards “—I put it together. You play for Todakita, then? Lucky! That’s a strong team!”

“Yes.” He pocketed the paper napkin ball, mindful of the way Sakaeguchi’s smile trembled as he did, and adjusted the strap of his bag against his shoulder. He cleared his throat. “And you play for Hatogaya.”

“Yeah. We’re not very strong ourselves, but it’s a lot of fun. I’ve already learned a lot from my senpais.”

“Right….” He cleared his throat again, at a loss for things to say. “What position do you play?”

“Second base, though I’m only a reserve now. How about you?”

When Abe envisioned second base it was from the catcher’s box: the furthest point in the infield, partially shuttered out of view by Haruna’s tall, broad-shouldered stature. Not a distraction, exactly. Of course not. Cutting a runner off at second was as good an out as any that wasn’t a strikeout, but only just. Whatever impelled a batter to shift into a runner, whether it was getting a hit, four balls, or a dead ball—it all resulted from the battery’s performance. A flawed lead, or failure to manage the pitcher’s state of mind. Second base was at the opposite end of a midpoint infinitely more demanding of his focus, and even more remote and out of reach than the mound was. He narrowed his eyes at Sakaeguchi then, as if all that distance had interposed itself between them right there in the convenience store aisle.

“Catcher.” A beat. “I’m paired with the team’s ace.”

Sakaeguchi’s eyes widened. “That’s—amazing! Wow! Isn’t it only your first year with the team though?”

“Yes. But he—the team’s ace—is a very...difficult pitcher to work with. None of the other catchers on the team can catch his pitches. I’m the only one who can.”

“Wow!” Sakaeguchi had said it a little louder this time. In the empty store, it was very nearly an exclamation. “And on such a strong team like Todakita too! You must be a really amazing catcher!”

Abe blinked. What a thing to say, about someone you’d just met and had never watched play before. Unsurety stuck in his throat. What could he say in response to that? He thought of the way his father would ask, _What is that catcher missing, Taka?_ during their dinner table spectating, and tick off the qualities on his large fingers as Abe rattled them off. It took careful observation to know, there was no way Sakaeguchi could tell. How could he? How could anyone, for that matter, as things were? 

Something began to vibrate close by, saving him from the trouble of formulating an answer. “Ah,” said Sakaeguchi, and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Sorry about that. It’s getting pretty late. I have to go pick up my brother.”

“Oh,” said Abe.

“Anyway, it was nice to finally meet you!” Sakaeguchi shouldered his bag, and smiled at him. “See you at school!”

“See you at school,” Abe returned, and turned to watch him go out into the early evening.

Once the bell over the door stopped tinkling with Sakaeguchi’s departure, Abe walked back to the magazine rack and picked up his milk tea. Condensation had accumulated on the plastic. It was noticeably warmer than it had been several minutes ago. But he didn’t bother replacing it with another, eventually taking the lukewarm one with him to the cashier.

— . . . —

His body had learned to bear the brunt of Haruna’s fastball near the beginning of winter, the week before persistent snowfall drove them to hold practice indoors. Eight pitches into the bullpen session, and as Haruna wound up to throw the ninth Abe had leaned stiffly forward onto his toes. His arm trembled out of position in that moment, and—before the impact fully suffused the reinforced leather, he heard the sound. Like a clap of thunder, too close for comfort. He closed his fingers against the glove all the same, and through the full-palm sting he felt the weight of the ball there. It was instinct more than anything, just as the trembling of his body in that last crucial moment had set him up for it. Pure chance. The ball had rocketed straight into his mitt. It was an accident, but a hush had fallen over the bullpen in the aftermath. He lifted his head. Haruna’s mouth made an _o_ , as disbelieving as everyone else, before the startled chorus of _Nice catch!_

Once their coach arrived and asked them to show him, Haruna wound up without a fuss and threw his tenth pitch of the day. Abe levered his arm into the same position as before, and caught it. 

When the terrible clap resounded once again their coach looked relieved. His hand seared with such a renewed intensity that he would spend the rest of the day flexing his fingers to restore feeling. Haruna seemed nonplussed, but in the locker room later he had laughed and grinned and told him what he had, about not being scared. 

His entire palm stayed a splotchy red from heel to fingertips for the next two days, but that night it made him think wildly of the fractals lightning left on human flesh, in the aftermath of striking. His own Lichtenberg figure, for meeting a force of nature and overcoming its accompanying inertia. As though all he had to do was adjust the angle at which he reached out to meet it.

They were given their new numbers the next day. First the #1, readily forfeited by their starting pitcher and entrusted solemnly to Haruna under coach’s watchful eye. Haruna received both it and their best wishes perfunctorily, but as Abe held out his hands for his #2 Haruna said, to all those who had gathered to watch the exchange, “My limit’s still 80 pitches a game. As long as you know that, I’ll accept this without complaint.”

Coach and the others reassured him that they knew, of course they remembered, and Abe stood there with the pair to the ace number in his hands. The ace and his attendant catcher. Against the redness of his palms the spotless white fabric of the #2 was stark, and he realized: to chase a force of nature was to throw yourself at the mercy of its mercurial whims; to remain standing in its wake was less than half of the ordeal.

The sight would not sit right with him, although it had been the sum of all he’d wanted for months. He did not give his mother the #2 that night or the next, and kept it pressed between two textbooks until the eve of a game, when necessity called for hasty needlework; the choice, like everything else of late, out of his hands.

— . . . —

As it turned out, Abe did not see him at school the next day. Class went by as it usually did, with the teacher reminding them of a classic literature test they would be sitting for in a few days before he dismissed them, and when it was over Abe headed straight for the bike racks outside, without encountering Sakaeguchi on the way.

Practice passed even slower without a bullpen session to look forward to. Haruna was as good as his word, nowhere in sight. Not even when the team transitioned into batting practice. He was most likely skulking around the gym—if he had shown up at all—following his special, esoteric training menu where no one could bother him. Or at least whichever part of it he could do with his finger ‘injured’ the way it was. Abe ground his teeth as the picture gained a clearer resolution in his mind’s eye: Haruna, alternating between lifting a five kilo dumbbell and sucking down a ‘nutrient-rich’ concoction through a straw—using only his right hand, of course! 

He swung early for the fifth time that day, and the coach told him his shoulders were too high, his movements more like forceful jerks than the clean swings that would intercept pitches on their trajectories and land hits.

At any rate, it went. They were dismissed by the time the grounds were bathed in dusk’s orange light. When the rest of the team pulled their bicycles into the convenience store’s lot, Abe continued on his way. He did this without thinking of much else but Shinei’s pitcher (a mediocre slider; fastballs plateauing at around 100 km/h for the first four innings, then losing about ten km/h after the fifth inning; and a decent fork the battery favored as a deciding pitch).

The routine held until next afternoon. 

It was a Saturday, which meant the team only had practice in the morning. On weekends their coach was predisposed to this frivolous sort of leniency, claiming it wouldn’t do any good to exhaust them without cause. Abe had heard from some of the older boys on the team that coach dropped this habit about a month before the first tournament of the year, which he found better late than never but far from ideal. You could never tell who would do something wholly inadvisable when they were out of your sight, like their third year shortstop, for instance, who had once showed off the way he could make his bike rear back onto his back wheel while they were riding home after practice. Honestly, it was better to keep the team longer and thoroughly exhaust them than to lose a regular to their own recklessness. That was how you forfeited tournaments before they started.

It was with this in mind that Abe biked to school after practice, where he could use the internet without fear of having his connection interrupted by one of his mother’s sudden, unpredictable urges to use the phone. All four members of the school’s Go club were off to one side playing matches online, a few other people seated in front of the monitors, and Abe made for the left corner of the room and sat down.

He had just reached the login screen when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He craned his neck one way, then the other. When he finally shifted in his seat to get a better look, it took him a handful of seconds to recognize who it was, thrown for a loop by the missing Hatogaya cap.

“Hey,” whispered Sakaeguchi.

“Hey,” Abe said, in a normal tone of voice.

“I saw you come in and thought I’d say hi.” He scratched at the back of his neck, a little sheepishly. Still whispering, he gestured at the empty station to Abe’s right. “Do you mind if I sit here?” 

Abe considered this, then shrugged. Even if watching him gave Sakaeguchi any similar ideas, all discussion forums affiliated with Todakita were password-protected. Abe had checked. “That’s fine. I was just about to do some…” he pitched his voice lower “...research.” 

“Oh. Nothing too sensitive then, I hope. Um. I’ll be right back.” With that Sakaeguchi walked to another station, pushing in the chair and bending over a little to handle the mouse and keyboard. The brief look Abe got of the monitor, before Sakaeguchi closed the window, was of something that looked suspiciously similar to that ubiquitous pinball game.

“I wouldn’t let you sit next to me if it was,” Abe called after him, and scowled affrontedly when one of the Go club players shushed him from across the room. At his station, Sakaeguchi’s shoulders shook with stifled laughter.

“You might want to keep your voice down,” Sakaeguchi suggested, once he’d returned with his bag in tow. “The Go club takes their online matches as seriously as we take our games, you know!”

“I doubt that…” he said dourly, and punched in his username and password. For a moment he was aware of Sakaeguchi’s regard, like the prickling heat of a spicy meal transposed onto the wrong side of his cheek. Then he snickered, though not unkindly, and Abe heard the the clack of his fingers on the keyboard.

“You’re a pretty funny guy, Abe.”

He didn’t dignify that with a response, for lack of one that would properly refute it.

Neither of them said anything for some time. The quiet was nearly companionable, punctuated only by their typing, the ticks of the clock’s noisy minute-hand on the wall, or the faroff chatter and accompanying footfalls from the hall. What he could see of Sakaeguchi’s face from the side, when he glanced over while a particularly image-heavy thread page loaded, looked focused and, Abe thought, out of place. He was playing Minesweeper now, his eyes tracking the movements his hand signed out for the cursor. He did not notice him looking. It was a very still focus; the kind Abe had learned to associate with the batters who were deceptively difficult to strikeout. No fidgeting or sidelong glances at him in the catcher’s box. Just that narrowed focus on the pitcher, as if they could discern where and when the pitch would enter their reach before Abe had signed for it. 

Sakaeguchi clicked. Abe looked away without waiting to see the results. He impatiently refreshed the page, then gave up and closed the window when it began to lag again immediately.

Two clicks later, Sakaeguchi was letting out a sigh. “Man,” he said, drawing the sound out plaintively. His seat creaked as he stretched against the plastic, then again when he straightened against it. That feeling again, against Abe’s cheek. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“I told you already. Research.”

“Right. But I thought you also said it wasn’t all that sensitive…?”

He chanced a look at Sakaeguchi, and looked away again as soon as their eyes met. He frowned, to make himself focus. “For my pitch-calling. There’s a lot of information out there on the internet. Some of it makes for useful insight when I’m coming up with a strategy.”

“...But all the search results are for baseball parents’ association forums.”

“Yes.”

“Wow...” Sakaeguchi said after a moment. He sounded duly impressed, if his wide eyes and the hesitation in his voice were any indication. “You’re a—um. A very dedicated catcher. Though that’s what a strong team must expect from the guy who’s paired with their ace, huh?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes. You could say that.” He frowned at the screen. “They should. If a second baseman knows how important my—how important some supplemental extracurricular data-gathering is in general…. You’d think they would appreciate it more. Pitchers too. Honestly. As if my doing this wasn’t helping him avoid getting hit. It’s obvious. That’s what catchers do.”

“Right,” agreed Sakaeguchi. He fidgeted, then added, “But maybe they think it’s a little...weird…?” He held his hands up when Abe turned to look at him. “Even if you’re doing it with the best of intentions, spying on parents’ forums—”

“Those are generally the best, but players’ and coaches’ forums can be just as good.”

“—spying on...all those forums...could be considered. Going above and beyond. In a creepy way.”

Abe blinked at him. “That’s what catchers do.” 

Sakaeguchi looked unconvinced, which was—well, it was typical. Understandable, even. He was just a second baseman, after all. What did they have to worry about? Relaying the ball back from the outfield properly, maybe, but not receiving many throws from home. At least not as much as the other infielders, what with the way they chose to play the position that was all but hidden behind the mound.

An idea occurred to him. Abe leaned in, capitalizing on the pretense of the shushing-enforced quiet space to inspire _confidence_. “Does Hatogaya happen to have an online forum?” He drew closer. “Maybe a parents’ discussion forum?”

“I think so…? Though it’s, uh. Password-protected. I think.”

He leaned back into his seat, baldly crestfallen. “Oh well. That’s...unexpectedly smart of them.”

Understanding dawned on Sakaeguchi’s face all at once. “I can’t believe you!” He was laughing as he shoved at Abe’s shoulder. “You didn’t think I’d—I’d—” He shoved Abe again. “You sneaky creep—” 

This time the Go club players retaliated with a chorus of shushes, which brought a smirk to Abe’s face. Beside him Sakaeguchi had his mouth hanging open and eyes wide, as though all their ineffectual shushing had succeeded in cowing him into contrition. He put his hand over his mouth, then lifted it off to stutter out a heartfelt, “S-sorry!” to the Go club, though when he caught sight of Abe’s expression he recovered quickly enough to give him another shove, and harder this time. “I can’t believe you actually thought that would _work_ ,” he hissed at him.

Abe rubbed circles into his shoulder. “It could have...” he insisted.

“Unbelievable.” Sakaeguchi shook his head, his disbelief more exaggerated than genuine. “You catchers are a dangerous bunch. Setting traps like that. And off the field too. You really are a dedicated catcher, though that’s putting it lightly. I think dedicated _menace_ of a catcher’s more like it.”

Nothing else was said for a few minutes afterwards. Abe waited, expecting there would be, though he quickly felt stupid for it when nothing came. He looked at Sakaeguchi and found that he was looking down into his own lap. There was an unfocused look to his eyes. The blankness there looked deeply sad, Abe thought. More out of place on Sakaeguchi’s face than that focused batter’s look he’d directed at his unfinished round of Minesweeper. 

But that was a ridiculous train of thought. Abe cleared his throat and swiveled back around to continue his research, but found himself interrupted before he could start.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Sakaeguchi asked. In the space of the minute that Abe hadn’t been looking, his eyes had regained that habitual and politely jovial look of theirs. There was no trace of melancholy in his face, as if what Abe had thought he’d seen was just in his imagination after all. 

“Practice. Only in the morning though. Our coach lets us go by noon on weekends for some reason.”

“Do you have the rest of the day off then?”

“Technically. But I don’t think of it like that. Just because the coach says we don’t have to practice for the rest of the day doesn’t mean I _won’t_. Not when there are still things left to—”

“Cool. So would you like to practice with me after you’re done?” Sakaeguchi gave him the same sheepish smile from before, when he’d asked if he could sit next to him. Whether it had come across his face in reaction to the interruption or his invitation, Abe wasn’t sure. “We could go to the batting center, or use the field here at school. Whatever we need to work on. I mean, if you don’t have plans already.”

Abe’s knees knocked against the underside of the desk. He looked away, then only halfway back. “Oh. That’s...uh. Wait. Don’t _you_ have practice?”

Sakaeguchi was blurry in Abe’s peripheral vision, but he could make it out when he looked away and back again. “My coach is the same way. We have weekend afternoons off too.”

That was alarming. Being this lax was either part of the M.O. of every coach in the Senior League, or their coach was employing the same approach as a weak team like _Hatogaya_. This clearly merited further inquiry, and Abe thought to announce this to Sakaeguchi before he realized doing so would neither answer nor adequately deflect the question for him.

“I’m not sure,” said Abe slowly, doing his best to keep his tone noncommittal. “We have a practice game coming up soon. The day after tomorrow. So our coach may—extend practice hours tomorrow in preparation for it. To get us ready. So I won’t know until I’m at practice tomorrow.”

Sakaeguchi’s sedate expression betrayed nothing. “Ah, I get you,” he said. “In any case, I think I’m going to stop by the convenience store after practice. I may be there for a while, so—if you do end up with the afternoon free, and you still want to keep practicing—you could meet me there. If you want.”

“Right. Yes. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Silence settled between them again. Though Sakaeguchi seemed to go about his solitary pursuits the same as he had before, playing round after round of Minesweeper, the quiet no longer felt near-companionable. Abe could not concentrate. Addressing the issue at that moment would be indiscreet. He scrolled through thread after thread without taking particular notice of any particular post for longer than he would ever admit, until at last he skimmed something about Minami Asagaya’s 5-hole batter suffering a childhood injury to his left ankle that—despite the poster’s assurances had recovered fully over the years with physical therapy—Abe was sure had lingered somehow, insidiously, waiting to be exploited. He pulled open a document and made a note of it to himself. 

He continued his reading, but the uneasiness descended upon him again when Sakaeguchi took his leave an hour later. He departed soon after, such was the severity of his malaise.

— . . . —

Of course, their coach did not make them stay past noon the next day.

Abe had obviously known he wouldn’t when he responded to Sakaeguchi’s invitation the day before, but felt like it was only responsible that he take time to consider the ramifications of his decision. So it was that, when Abe trundled into the locker room alongside the rest of his team, he pulled the product of his labors out of his bag: a rather messy list he had eschewed studying for his classic literature test to compose after dinner the night before. After toweling off his sweat-soaked hair and changing his shirt, he leaned into the lee of his open locker to reexamine his conclusions.

All in all, things were not looking good for Sakaeguchi.

He’d jotted down GOOD INSIDE SOURCE FOR HATOGAYA in Sakaeguchi’s favor before he reminded himself that Hatogaya hadn’t even made it past the first round of the regional tournament the year before, so he appended VERY LIMITED UTILITY for the sake of clarification. Below it was what logically followed: HATOGAYA SPY? dutifully written in overthick characters, this particular item underlined with such frequency that the lines had metamorphosed into one, misshapen blot of blue ink. The transcription accurately conveyed the gravity of what was a very real possibility, he decided, and thoughtfully filled in two more lines. It seemed doubly likely, considering the way Sakaeguchi had seen through his question about Hatogaya-affiliated discussion forums the previous afternoon. Perhaps he was using the offer as a pretense to return the subterfuge in kind? A troubling thought! He set it down on the cool surface of his locker, pen poised to write in POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY FOR RETALIATION—

“What’s that?”

He nearly jumped out of his skin, suddenly aware of the speaker’s presence at his back. This, naturally, from Haruna, who was taking full advantage of his truly obscene height to lean close and squint at Abe’s list over his shoulder. He scrambled to cover it, reflexively, but Haruna was already reading, ONLY A SECOND BASEMAN (FROM A WEAK TEAM), aloud. What followed was a puzzled silence from Haruna as Abe stuffed the list back into his pocket, out of sight.

“N-nothing! It’s none of your business!”

He knew even before he said it that it was too late. True to form, Haruna began to speak about three seconds after his exclamation. 

“You’re deciding whether or not you want to make a new friend,” he said, “with that list. Based on how good a baseball player he is.”

“He’s not my friend. We go to the same school. That’s it.”

Haruna guffawed, doubtlessly drawing the attention of their lingering teammates. “This is by far the _weirdest_ thing you’ve ever done in front of me, Takaya. And I remember the time you asked me about whether you should should soak in juice or pour it over yourself during a juice cleanse.”

 _Always_ bringing up the juice cleanse question, which—for the record!—Abe had only asked out in a misguided attempt to connect with Haruna on a personal level, knowing he was some kind of personal health and fitness nut. No use responding to that for the umpteenth time; Abe suspected Haruna would bring up his initial misconceptions about juice cleanses in front of the press, should they advance far enough in the regional tournament to merit an interview that year.

So he said, “I wasn’t doing it _in front of you_ , Motoki-san!” instead, and felt vaguely mortified at how his voice cracked in the middle of it.

Haruna had a hand clapped over his mouth. There were actual tears in his eyes from all the laughter—utterly unreasonable. “Takaya,” he said, lifting the hand to let the sound of his name out. “Takaya, what kind of person needs a _list_ to decide whether to make a friend or not?”

“He’s not my friend. He barely even qualifies as an acquaintance.”

“Okay, fine. ‘Making an acquaintance,’ then. Same question.”

Abe sucked in a breath. “I don’t expect you to understand, Motoki-san, but fraternization carries _risks_ —”

“What the heck is _fraternization_?”

“—especially when you’re dealing with someone who plays in the same league as you do. Even if the individual in question is—turns out benign, and you’re convinced that you can outsmart them, like I am. Even the smallest thing can be used against us. I mean. It’s not just about the acquaintance himself. He could also fraternize with a lot of other people from the same league, and _their_ intentions could be anything but ‘friendly.’ It’s only cautious to approach these—arrangements knowingly. Especially when you’re in a position as important as yours or mine.” 

“Takaya,” said Haruna, fully sobered from his mirth at last, “you take yourself way too seriously.”

These were the first words they’d exchanged since their argument on Thursday, and the conversation was already at an impasse. Over something that hardly concerned Haruna, no less. Abe successfully resisted the urge to rub his temples. Why he saw it fit to champion Sakaeguchi’s case was beyond him. He didn’t like to think too hard about Haruna’s motives. Made a hard and fast rule of it, in fact, lest he make another ridiculed overture the likes of ‘juice cleanse soaks’ and listening to the awful American rap music Haruna liked and had convinced Abe was known as ‘hippity-hop’ out of, Abe found out later, some elaborate joke. It had taken his mother weeks to stop passively aggressively overloading his plate with vegetables in retaliation for playing the music loudly in his room, as he had been led to believe was the only proper way to go about listening to these things if he wanted to get ‘the full experience.’ He could scarcely afford enduring another incident like that. Professionalism was best, and professionalism meant sticking to the relevant issues affecting their battery. You didn’t have to be friends with your battery-mates. Aspiring pros like Haruna should react well to that kind of consideration. 

Abe caught sight of the bandage wound around Haruna’s index finger. _How is your papercut doing?_ sounded like too much of an obsequious and indulgent change of topic, though in his head it sounded just the right shade of disapproving.

“I mean...okay,” Haruna continued, taking advantage of his hesitation to keep ploughing ahead. “At least give the poor kid a chance, Takaya. Write down some normal stuff on there too.”

“Like _what_?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Like if he’s a nice guy. Whether he’s cool to hang out with or not. Or, like...do you have things in common?” Haruna snorted. “That’s a pretty scary thought….”

“But none of that matters. Maybe you missed the point of the—the analysis, but—”

“Ugh. You’re hopeless. Whatever, Takaya. Tell your ‘acquaintance’ or whatever that you can’t keep being acquaintances...or whatever. I don’t care.” 

That was a whole lot of ‘whatevers;’ Abe nearly cringed. “ _I’m_ not the hopeless one.” He closed his eyes and kept his breathing even, straining for every scrap of professionalism he could muster. “Motoki-san, I’m protecting our advantage. If other teams found things out about your pitching style, then they’d a lot closer to beating us.”

“Sure,” Haruna replied, though the way he crossed his arms, his bandaged finger sticking out safely over the crook of his elbow, made his continued disagreement apparent.

“I don’t see why you even _care_ —” He stopped, the answer finally occurring to him. He regarded Haruna with a suspicious, considering eye. “Do _you_ have friends on other teams, Motoki-san?”

“What? No!”

That was it. It all made sense now; Haruna was encouraging him to ‘befriend’ Sakaeguchi to cover up his own indiscretions. The vicious, triumphant feeling he felt at the realization was undercut by an accompanying dread. His stomach turned to acid. How much had he _told_ these other players to warrant this kind of deception?

“Did you tell them anything? What did you tell them, Motoki-san!?”

“I told you that I don’t have friends on other teams!”

“Not just in the Seniors! The boys’ league too. People talk. There are online discussion forums where people post all kinds of things, and most of them aren’t properly password-protected. I doubt the boys’ leagues’ would be. If someone talked about you on there, _anyone_ could see—”

“Shut up, Takaya! I already told you I don’t! I mean, I did, but….” Haruna’s expression went hard. “No. I don’t. Not anymore, I guess.”

Abe watched him, considering whether or not he should press him on that ‘I guess.’ It hardly inspired confidence. “Fine,” he decided, “but you have to be careful, Motoki-san. Our battery is—it’s worth—”

“Yeah,” said Haruna, uncharacteristically agreeable. For an uncanny moment Abe thought he’d known what he was going to say before he managed to say it—and had _agreed_ with him—and felt his eyes widen with hope. Then Haruna made a humorless noise in the back of his throat, and looked at him. His glare cored Abe to the bone. “The next time I meet someone, I’ll be sure to make some crazy list about it before deciding if I’ll let them be my friend or not.”

“That’s—” Abe began, the beginnings of a frown on his lips.

“And if they’re a team captain or a clean-up or another pitcher, I’ll tell them all about my pitching and your leading stuff—”

“That’s not—”

“—but _only_ if they’re all three at the same time and they, like, trade me the password to their website beforehand. Great advice, Takaya. Thanks.” He tore away before Abe could get another word in edgewise, picking up and carrying his bag with him on his way out the door. 

The words Abe had been readying didn’t quite die until he heard his footfalls recede off the pavement and beyond hearing. Their weight lingered on his tongue for a while afterward, and he sat down stiffly on the bench bisecting the passage between lockers and windows to wait it out. He stayed there until their sour aftertaste was all that remained, and his thoughts settled. He got to his feet.

— . . . —

“I wasn’t sure if you were coming,” said Sakaeguchi as they stepped out of the convenience store, the bell tinkling overhead. “Too good a chance for you to try getting those passwords out of me for you to pass up, huh?”

“Please,” Abe said, “first round eliminations like Hatogaya aren’t worth the effort.”

Sakaeguchi punched him lightly on the shoulder; Abe was surprised to find he’d been expecting it. “You jerk,” he said almost warmly. “That’s not how you were acting yesterday. All, ‘Does Hatogaya happen to have…” he paused in his farcically low register delivery to let his mouth loll half-open, just long enough to give the vague impression of impropriety “...a _parents’ discussion forum_?’ and looking disappointed when I told you about the passwords.” 

“That’s not what I sound like,” said Abe, because it wasn’t. 

Sakaeguchi rolled his eyes but let it lie. Wise of him. 

They were hovering just outside the convenience store. A restless energy churned the contents of Abe’s stomach, and he fidgeted, aware of how the paper inside his pocket crumpled with the movement. Standing still, his reason for overruling the compelling conclusion he’d come to seemed far less substantial. Near hypocritical, after what had happened with—what had happened back in the locker room earlier. Still, he reminded himself. Still, it was one thing for someone like him to do this. He was prepared to prove he could handle himself where others couldn’t. Nevertheless, he was anxious to get moving again.

He wet his lips. “We should decide where we’re going,” he said, “before we get in trouble for loitering.”

“Good idea,” said Sakaeguchi. His eyebrows scrunched up a little in thought. “You still feel up for practicing, right? Want to go to the batting center?”

“Eh. The batting center is all about...batting.”

Sakaeguchi’s mouth twitched a bit, around the corners of his lips. “Well. It is called ‘the batting center’ for exactly that reason, so...yeah.”

“Exactly,” said Abe. “That’s the problem. There’s no reason for all that—that batting-centrism. It’s a waste of time as it is now. Going there would be more productive if there were catching cages too. You know. For catchers. Those would be useful. Pitches are meant to end up as strikes, if the battery knows what they’re doing...so wasting all those high velocity pitching machines on _batters_ is—it’s nothing short of. Diabolical. It’s like they want all pitches to get hit and catchers to fumble the ball from lack of practice, because all the cages are used for batting practice instead of catching practice. I’m convinced their intention is making the hit-to-strike ratio disproportionate. They should take steps to round out the experience.” His face felt unpleasantly hot, from all the explaining.

“Have you actually—” Sakaeguchi started to say before stopping and shaking his head. “You’ve thought about that a lot, haven’t you?” His smile looked amused and disbelieving. “Okay,” he said before Abe could clarify that yes, he had. “Okay. So no batting center. How about we go to to the school grounds? They should be free by now, right?”

“I’d hope so. If the _school team_ practices more than our teams do, then there wouldn’t be much of a point to playing in the Seniors.”

“Ah! But it’s good practice, don’t you think? The Seniors, I mean. Playing with regulation balls now means we’ll be more than used to them by the time we’re in high school, and any coach would be happy to get new first years with that kind of experience. So even if I don’t make regular before my last summer with Hatogaya, the experience I’ve gained should make it all worth it.”

It sounded rehearsed, that response. As though Sakaeguchi had several opportunities to recite it, and had perfected the justification for his efforts somewhere along the way. If not in the foreseeable future, then someday. Surely. Abe could do nothing but bob his head in acknowledgement of the sense in it. He hadn’t had the time to research and run a cross-comparison of practice times yet, and could hardly refute it. But he understood the sentiment.

Sakaeguchi cleared his throat. “So...should we get going?”

“Oh. Yeah. Let’s go.”

They walked back the way Abe had come to get there, the silence between them comfortable this time. The noonday sun was warm, but the breeze left them slightly hunched over, occasionally rubbing their hands against their arms in an effort to trap the heat against their skin. Setting a brisker pace helped, shortening an already relatively short walk. Soon they arrived at the length of the school fence, and were pleased to look through the old chain-links to find the field unoccupied save the few indistinct silhouettes running laps on the other side. Sakaeguchi glanced at the ledge running parallel to the sidewalk, then stepped onto it. He kept the same pace, one foot in front of the other, his arms outstretched so that they were perpendicular to his torso.

“You might fall,” Abe said mildly. “What would your team say if you got injured, eh?”

Sakaeguchi chuckled. “No big deal. It’s not like I’m a regular or anything.” But he dismounted with a hop almost immediately after he said so, resuming his place beside Abe on the sidewalk. Their bags jostled against one another the rest of the way.

Once there they ducked into the shade of the visitors’ dugout, more for lack of a plan than genuine windedness. Sakaeguchi set his bag down on the bench, keeping its strap around his shoulder, and sat down with his legs bent inward. It was the polite posture of someone who felt like a guest in a space that wasn’t their own: taking as little space as possible; careful not to touch too much of the rough, discolored wood, lest he leave some indelible, uninvited mark. The sight of him was enough to engender a similar feeling in Abe, who dropped his own bag more carefully than he usually did in the locker room. It was their school, but it still felt as though they had only arrived earlier at the opponents’ grounds than anyone else for a scheduled practice game, with the idea to warm up, but found their eagerness diminished by their smallness in that unfamiliar place.

“So...do you have an idea about what you want to work on?” Sakaeguchi asked in a near-whisper. “We probably can’t do much catcher stuff, since I’m not a pitcher.” He cracked a smile. “Probably not batting though, right? We wouldn’t want to make our time here too batting-centric.”

“There isn’t much else you can practice with a reserve second baseman, is there?”

“Nasty,” said Sakaeguchi, with exaggerated pique. “As if you’re perfect at everything already.”

Abe unbraced his shoulders, said, “I never said I was,” and, disarmed by Sakaeguchi’s mocking claim to the contrary, admitted, “My throws to the infield could be better.”

“Ah, I don’t think it’s something you should beat yourself up about too much. Our starting catcher isn’t very good at throwing to second yet either. By the time you’re in high school your arm should be much stronger.”

“With practice, maybe, but I don’t really get much of a chance during games.”

“You get that many strikeouts?”

“Yeah, but we end up with a lot of walks and dead balls too.” He scraped at a scar in the wood with his nail, his mind cautiously blank. “Their offensive lineup hardly makes contact with the ball either way when he’s on the mound, and catching his pitches takes a lot of—fortitude. So it’s hard to shift into position and throw to the infield even if a runner gives me reason to.”

Sakaeguchi’s eyebrows seemed liable to rise past his hairline. “He must be a scary-amazing pitcher….”

“He’s alright,” Abe said. He could have stopped there—he knew he should have stopped there—but he continued, “Haruna—his name’s Haruna—has an eighty-pitch limit during games, because he’s worried about getting injured. The other day he got a papercut on his finger, so now the guy’s refusing to pitch in tomorrow’s practice game.” Referring to him by his family name, without honorifics, sent a private thrill through him.

“And your coach is okay with that?”

“Yeah. He made him our ace knowing about all that.” Abe shrugged. “There’s a rumor that something happened to him on his old team that made him this way, but….” He shrugged another time, uselessly.

When Sakaeguchi spoke again, his voice was measured and careful. “Well, I don’t know Haruna-san or the situation on your team, aside from what you’ve told me, but it sounds like he has his reasons. I mean, someone wouldn’t be that careful without one. Right? Maybe the rumor’s true, and something bad happened to him before, and now he’s being extra careful so it won’t happen to him again.”

“That—it doesn’t explain why he won’t follow my leads,” Abe interjected shortly. He didn’t know where the heat in his voice had come from, or why hearing what Sakaeguchi had to say left him feeling stung. He had not meant for any of it. “I never ask him to go over his limit, and I learned to catch for him even though I—” He bit the inside of his cheek. “I learned to catch for him,” he said again.

“Like I said, I don’t know everything about what’s going on, but I think you can both be right and wrong at the same time.” This came out sounding like a question, as if Sakaeguchi himself was unsure of what he was saying. Abe could have determined if this was so, had he looked up, but he kept his gaze stubbornly downcast, focused on his finger scraping and scraping at the scar in the wood. Sakaeguchi went on, a bit haltingly, “Just because Haruna-san has his reasons doesn’t mean he’s always going to act right. So some of the stuff he’s done to you is still wrong, even if his reasons aren’t. I guess being, uh...patient with each other, and stuff may be for the best. It’s—um. It’s complicated. Too complicated for someone like me to say anything smart about it, anyway. Sorry. I’m not being very helpful right now, am I.”

Abe breathed out through his teeth. His body shuddered with it. Already he had divulged more than he feared Haruna had earlier that day. He could not bring himself to care, for an instant—though only for an instant. Alarm swept in a chill up and down his spine. At first in reaction to his startling apathy, then what was more characteristic of him: the shame of having erred, and found out in his moment of weakness, far past any semblance of control or professionalism. Sakaeguchi’s tact had only made it worse. He knew already, despite the dictates of common sense, that Sakaeguchi would tell no one. Had he believed otherwise, he would have feigned authority and stopped at nothing to extract a promise to that effect. He knew with that same, groundless certainty that Sakaeguchi would not laugh at him for his vulnerability, though part of him hoped he would. It unnerved him.

“Do you still want to practice?” Sakaeguchi asked him, without the barest trace of mirth in his voice.

Abe nodded, then nodded yet more vigorously. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I? That’s why we came here.” He made a show of getting up. The suddenness of the movement left him dizzy. He gritted his teeth and stretched through it, extending his arms so that they brushed against the ceiling. His shirt hiked up with the movement. He didn’t realize it until he felt the cool air on his stomach, and the sunlight slanting in under the dugout’s awning on the skin of his side. These sensations were soothing, and it was this unexpected cross section of relief that made him aware of his exposure.

Sakaeguchi was staring at the exposed swath of his skin with wide eyes. In the shade of the dugout his bruises looked darker, the purples and yellows gone lurid against the planes of his stomach. He stiffened. Felt himself go uncomfortably hot, then unbearably cold—both like the tremble that reached his glove as a fastball rushed by, too wild to compensate for in time and catch. 

There was no reason to react this way. In the locker room he had resolved to meet his teammates’ pity and concern with pride. Persistence had merit in and of itself whether results were forthcoming or still far off. Every mark Haruna’s pitches left on his skin constituted another step toward the point where he could crouch in the catcher’s box without trembling, and catch his pitches without faltering. Made a regular at last by forcing his body to learn to do what the other catchers couldn’t. 

But out in this unfamiliar dugout, alongside a boy from another team, the bruises mottling his body embarrassed him. He tugged the hem of his shirt back down, very nearly shy. 

The stillness broke. Sakaeguchi politely averted his eyes. Too late, as it happened, but even belated his consideration was reassuring. His eyes sunk deeper into the shadows with his head turned like that, but Abe could make out, in profile, Sakaeguchi’s teeth indenting his lower lip, as if in a wince. Then he turned all the way around, so that he was facing Abe again. He looked, ridiculously, self-conscious, despite having no reason to be.

“All of those—they’re all from catching?” he asked. It was a question with an obvious answer, yet Sakaeguchi looked surprised when Abe nodded. Yet he did not look away again. Sakaeguchi kept his gaze fixed on Abe, who waited, fidgeting, impelled by that same certainty to stay silent in expectation. Finally, Sakaeguchi said, in the gentlest tone Abe had heard from him yet, “You really are a good catcher,” and it was—it was.

Here is what no one told you about catching thunderclaps in your mitt: after perhaps the fifth or eighth or tenth success the sound was diminished, so gradually you hardly noticed what was happening until you realized that the percussion no longer deafened you, and your involuntary trembling was manageable. The throws themselves retained their terrible, mercurial ferocity. It was you; you changed. Your body, compensating. New callouses on your palms. The occasional mistake weathered with a practiced method that penetrated past conscious thought into muscle memory in the midst of all the pain. Do not breathe, or you will wheeze; let your muscles relax on their own, because movement will only heighten the agony. In this way the ability you had honed came to seem less and less extraordinary; a reaction to and therefore an extension of someone else’s ability. Not yours but theirs. Once you learned this—after your body, in its adaptation, betrayed your reflected awe—you inevitably thought to ask, _Am I just his wall?_

After he asked himself the first time it became painstakingly evident, in retrospect, how basic the question was. In the end he was surprised by it because his eyes had been diverted from their battery’s trajectory, which must have been obvious from the very first time coach introduced them. Like a child during an at-bat he had taken his eye off the incoming ball so that he missed the telltale break, and swung at a pitch that was a ball, would have been called a ball, had it not been for that thoughtless, superfluous movement.

Well, Taka? What is that catcher lacking?

Not ‘diligence,’ ‘preparedness,’ ‘fastidiousness,’ or ‘foresight;’ there was no litany of deficiencies, nor a lack of anything that integral. For Abe, it had been ‘physical ability,’ so that was what he had thrown himself into cultivating in himself. But there it was, the part that made him doubt everything. Because it was one thing to catch Haruna’s pitches, but another thing entirely to be a good catcher. There was no distinction in being an ace’s wall, no satisfaction beyond the momentary in catching three pitches, each of them strikes, if he did not sign for them beforehand. Until Haruna took him seriously as a catcher, how would anyone know that he was anything more than the pitcher’s backstop? How would he?

His mouth worked soundlessly, until it found the words. “There are—sometimes the way he…. It’s like the only thing his cares about is _him_ —his own future as a pro, and nothing else but that, and it makes me think—it makes me ask myself why I’m even—”

He stopped, suddenly and terribly aghast at himself, and swiped a fist across his stinging eyes. It came back dry. He let out a long, noisy exhale. With his next breath he swallowed the inchoate mass of what he should not have voiced, should not have let take any space in his thoughts, down. He looked up. “We’re a good battery,” he said, in a voice he could recognize. “I’m the only one who can catch his pitches. I wouldn’t expect a second baseman to know this, because you don’t need to, but pitchers are—they’re nuts. Every single one of them. But they have to work with catchers to play baseball, because there are rules. Motoki-san will listen to me. I know he will. I’m his catcher. He has to. I just have to find the right way to make him.”

Much of it rang false. How could it not, after everything he’d admitted into the choked air of the dugout? Even he could recognize that. Yet after the worst of it passed, he was able to see the kernel of truth within it: he would not stop, until it was all manifest. He breathed in, and smelled the musty odor of the wood through the crisp nipping of the air in his nostrils. 

Uncannily, as though he’d come to the same realization himself, Sakaeguchi said, “There are some things you just can’t change. So let it be for now, and turn your attention onto the things that you can change.” He spoke distantly, his eyes focused not on Abe but the floor. Then he shrugged and looked up, though he did not meet Abe’s eyes for some time. “That’s what my mom always tells me and my siblings all the time, anyway.”

“So what you’re saying is that I should just give up. Because—”

“No, no,” said Sakaeguchi as he removed the strap of his duffel bag from his shoulder. He unzipped it and, after turning away to sift through it for a few seconds, stood with his glove in hand and a tentative smile tugging at his lips. “What I mean is that even though you can’t get Haruna-san to see things your way right now, you _can_ practice throwing to second with me.”

Abe’s gaze trailed from Sakaeguchi’s mouth to his glove, uncomprehending. “What?”

“I’ve still got some time before I have to pick up my brother, and we could use that time to practice together like we said we would. I mean, you said you have trouble throwing to second, didn’t you? Working on getting better at that is something you can do now, and it’s better to do something productive than worrying. Which would be, um, unproductive.”

He mulled this over. There was some sense to that argument, he had to admit. Talking to Haruna was frustrating. More so than trying to hold a conversation about relaying with those offense brute types. Pitchers were preposterous creatures across the board, obviously, but none of the pitchers Abe had caught for before Todakita had been capable of Haruna’s particular level of unreasonableness. Granted, all the pitchers Abe had worked with before were elementary schoolers at the time. Perhaps they only grew more unreasonable with age, working under a similar principle to the pungent imported wine his mother was constantly dissuading his father from drinking with his dinner.

Sakaeguchi cocked his head quizzically to the side. “Are you worried that I’ll become so good a second baseman that my team will beat yours?”

He was joking. Abe registered that he was probably joking. He frowned rather austerely at him all the same. “That’s ridiculous. A good second baseman couldn’t turn the entire team around on his own. Especially if he isn’t even a regular.”

“So that’s even less reason for you to worry about what I’m getting it out of it! C’mon, Abe. We could even do two things at once. Does your class have a classic literature test coming up soon too?”

Oh. That. He’d forgotten. “Tomorrow,” he said aloud.

“Us too. Why don’t we study while we practice? You’ve memorized some of the poems, right? It’d be, like—double the productivity. Yeah?”

“Multitasking. That’s—excellent.”

“See! That’s the spirit!” Sakaeguchi's grin was huge. Abe had to look away to keep from returning it. He busied himself with unzipping and rifling through his own bag, burying the tilt of his mouth beneath his focus.

Less than two minutes later they were walking out into the sunlight. Squinting, Abe watched Sakaeguchi jog straight across the field, circumventing the mound as he went. Then, remembering himself, he squatted over the catcher’s box, as he had as long as he could hold a ball, and felt grounded. He set down the ball for a moment. Knuckled his mitt. Felt the pliability of the leather against his fist.

At second base, Sakaeguchi cupped his free hand around his mouth. “Ready?” he called, his voice carrying clear across the infield.

“Ready,” Abe called back. He picked the ball up, lined the seam with the divot between his index and middle fingers, and, pivoting his weight onto his back leg, he raked himself into throwing position, took a step forward, and threw.

The ball went wide. Sakaeguchi had to take a few steps toward third to catch it. It was the kind of throw a catcher might make after the fifth or sixth inning, rushing for the cutoff the moment the strike slapped into their mitt. Way too sloppy. Embarrassingly so. If this had been a game, then it would have earned him a reprimand back in the dugout.

Once he’d loped back onto second, Sakaeguchi said, “A faint clap of thunder,” and threw.

Too high, and not fast enough for it. Abe stood up out of his crouch to catch it, but was slow in getting back into position, remembering. “Cloudy skies!” he yelled in response, and shifted into the throw.

“It’s ‘clouded skies,’ not ‘cloudy skies!’” Sakaeguchi corrected him, and missed the ball for his trouble. He had to follow it into the outfield to retrieve it.

“ _Clouded_ skies!”

“Too late now! You get a deduction for that mistake!”

“Eh? Then what about a deduction for how you missed my throw?”

“Perhaps rain will come!” Sakaeguchi said abruptly in response, startling Abe. The ball smacked into his glove with a vengeance, knocking him into disequilibrium. After righting himself, he could just barely make out the shape of Sakaeguchi’s grin.

Abe grit his teeth, pivoted, yelling, “If so, will you stay here with me!” as he did, and let the ball fly from his hand more forcefully.

He had to lean a little off second to catch that one, laughing as he did, but his foot was still on base, and he did catch it. An out, to be sure. “A faint clap of thunder!” Sakaeguchi began for them, breathless, and threw the ball back.

There were three ways to throw to second, but the deliberate pauses they took to recite each line only allowed for the one. They repeated the motions, reciting each tanka’s upper and lower phrases twice or even three times if either of them made a mistake, and did so until they had gone over what they could remember of the material three times. By the end Abe’s legs and arms ached, as did his dry throat, but a few of their throws were better than decent, traveling low and fast across the infield.

After his last throw was caught, Abe lifted his mask and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, waiting over home plate as Sakaeguchi walked the distance back. He went along the length of the diamond this time, from second to third, and finally from third to home, tossing and catching the ball as he went. When he arrived they stood there together, wordless and smiling. Sakaeguchi pressed the ball back into Abe’s right hand. His fingers were hot from the sun, a bit damp. An altogether unexpected sensation for what had been, until then, a chilly spring. The heat stilled him, lingering on his skin for a long moment after Sakaeguchi took back his hand, a little slowly.

“Nice job out there,” Sakaeguchi said after a moment. His voice cracked with what Abe could only gather was thirst. “You got better the more we practiced—a lot better.”

“Yeah,” said Abe. “So did you.”

With that they retreated into the dugout, where Abe took off and stowed his gear. They toweled their faces and arms off in accomplished silence, and once they’d folded and stored those in their bags, fanning their chests and stomachs with their shirts as they went, Sakaeguchi pulled out a plastic bag of store-bought food: four onigiri, two steamed meat buns, and a single bottled water. “I didn’t have enough money on me to buy two,” he told Abe by way of apology.

“You didn’t have to,” Abe said automatically, though his stomach nearly wrenched itself in knots at the sight. “But good thinking,” he amended.

“No, no. It’s the least I can do now that you’ve taken time out of your busy post-practice research schedule to play catch with me. Besides, I’m starving. Aren’t you?” He divied the food out equally and set the water bottle in the middle. “Hope you like salmon and shrimp filling. I got two of each.”

They ate without speaking, for a dearth of pausing in between bites. Still they were careful not to spill anything in the dugout. The bottled water they passed back and forth between the two of them, pouring small gulps into their mouths without letting the plastic touch their lips. Once they’d finished Abe watched Sakaeguchi pick up and crinkle up the wrappings between both of his hands. He placed them all back into the plastic bag, which he knotted shut. Afterwards they shouldered their bags and stepped back out onto the field, tilting their heads to check the position of the sun without exposing their eyes to its glare.

“We should do this again sometime,” Sakaeguchi said. “I had fun,” he added, as though that were a completely normal thing to say. In the way he had said it, it didn’t sound like a pleasantry. Perhaps it was ordinary, for boys like Sakaeguchi.

“It was a good use of our time. Very—productive. Like you kept saying.”

Sakaeguchi’s answering laughter was tired but genuine. “Yeah,” he said, “though maybe we could exchange numbers? So we can let each other know if and when we can meet up instead of waiting around someplace.”

It was only logical, but. What a thing to do. And with a second baseman, no less. Perhaps if it was another catcher, or a former teammate. That at least he could construe as touching base. Networking. This, on the other hand—was reckless. ‘Reckless’ was the word that came to mind. Imprudent, he would think while frowning over the crumpled sheet where he’d written his cost-benefit analysis later, which even then was a weight in his pocket, forgotten for most of the afternoon but newly remembered in that moment. The events of the day came back to weigh on him with it, and he thought…. In the moment he thought to say, That’s not a good idea, but heard himself recite his phone number instead, even pausing considerately in his delivery after every set of two or three numbers, so Sakaeguchi would have an easier time of copying it down. 

There was a lump in his throat. Abe swallowed against it. “Aren’t you supposed to give me yours now?”

“Hold on, hold on...” said Sakaeguchi. He typed out something onto the keypad of his cell phone for a few more seconds. “There! I sent you a message.”

Sure enough, his phone vibrated in his pocket. The message was from an unknown number, though the subject line clarified any lingering doubts he may have had.

>   
>  **4:09 PM**  
>  **SUBJECT:** its sakaeguchi !
> 
> hi !

He read it and reread it, then flipped his phone shut. “Got it,” he confirmed, and followed Sakaeguchi off the field.

“Good luck on the test tomorrow,” Sakaeguchi told him once they reached the sidewalk, “and with your practice game! Even if you don’t end up playing, you could—uh...gather data about the other team. You know, productive catcher things.”

“Same to you. With the test.”

“Don’t confuse ‘clouded’ with ‘cloudy’ again, now!”

That had been called over his shoulder after they’d turned to their separate ways. Abe stopped and looked back. Sakaeguchi had as well. They exchanged a look, across the distance that separated them, and Abe—he let it lie.

— . . . —

The test did go well. Studying the day before paid off, though pairing it with throwing practice made it so that Abe had to go through the motions, in his head, aching muscles tensing in the best mimicry of the shift he could muster—seated as he was behind the classroom desk—whenever he couldn’t remember a line or word readily. It was a pleasant soreness. Abe found himself tensing his calf and thigh muscles off and on that day Just to feel it, and better recall the memory of his throws at the apogee of their proficiency. Once or twice he wondered if Sakaeguchi had used the same recall technique during the test period. Except maybe with his arms. If not, he would have to tell him about it.

But the practice game with Shinei went much less well. They won by a discouragingly slender margin: 8-7. Todakita scored the decisive run in the fifth inning and held that two-point lead until the seventh, when Shinei had scored a run off the careless battery, shaved Todakita’s lead down to a single point, and stood poised to tie the game. Would have tied the game, had it not been for their 6-hole popping the ball up high in the air and ending the game with a simple catch.

Abe watched all this unfold from the dugout with a clipboard in his lap. He stayed there throughout, alongside Haruna, who had refused their coach’s offer to switch with the starters at the beginning of the third inning, and again at the close of the fifth. From this vantage point he saw less than he would have from the catcher’s box, bleachers, or TV—all of which he preferred to the dugout for these purposes—but had resolved not to dwell in it. In the name of ‘productivity’ he squinted at Shinei’s offensive lineup from the shade, gleaning what he could from the position that would likely be his for the rest of his time or at the very least his next two years in the Seniors, waiting on Haruna’s word to take the field. In this respect, it was good preparation for what was to come.

They practiced lightly after the game with a curtailed training menu, and when the team returned to the locker room, most of them in high spirits after their coach’s announcement that they would start practice later the next day, Abe turned after packing his bag to find Haruna facing him from the other side of the bench, looking sullen.

“Motoki-san,” Abe said.

“Look,” said Haruna. He brandished his left index finger for him to inspect, which Abe realized, after a beat, was unbandaged. “I just took it off, and it looks better now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel like pitching again—so get ready. Hope the time off from practice hasn’t made you backslide on your progress, or whatever.”

“I’m—glad,” Abe said, shorter than he’d intended, “that you finger is better, and we can start practicing in the bullpen again soon.”

Haruna stared at him with the glaze of disinterest in his round eyes. He did not say a thing. Perhaps it was the early evening light, or the duration of this opportunity to look at him up close like that, but—he looked younger to Abe. Somehow. From a certain angle. The way his lower lip was sticking out a bit made his scowl look a little like a _pout_ , the kind Shun shot his way when he liberated a morsel of eggs of his plate. The Haruna breathed in heavily, and sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, as though just standing there was taxing for him. 

“Listen, Takaya—”

“Motoki-san,” Abe interrupted him, “I—I spent time with my acquaintance yesterday. After practice. Not that it’s any of your—something you _need_ to know, but I figured I should tell you about it anyway. Since you seemed so...interested about the situation when you...read about him.”

He was looking at Abe in surprise. His eyes wide, his eyebrows raised. “Good for you,” he said, audibly confused. Then, recovering, he added, “Unless you scared him away with how nasty you act.”

“I didn’t.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

A heavy moment passed between them, and when it seemed like neither of them would begin yelling or storm off, Abe realized, _This is the longest he’s ever looked at me._ It was true. Or, at least under these very specific circumstances it was true: in the locker room, while standing this close to one another, and without much disinterest in Haruna's gaze. What would happen next? he wondered. This had never happened before; it was impossible for him to say with any kind of certainty.

To Abe’s surprise, what Haruna did was reach out and ruffle his hair. “You’re so scrawny,” Haruna said eventually. “Part of me always feels bad about pitching to you, even though you’re not as bad at catching now as you were back when you started. How can you expect to be taken seriously if it looks like a fastball would bowl you over?” His drew his hand away from the crown of Abe’s head, after patting it thoughtfully— _patting it_ , as if he were a child. “I guess that bad attitude of yours makes all the difference. You really oughta look into your nutrition regimen though.”

“I eat meat with every meal, if that’s what you mean—I take my ‘nutrition’ very seriously, Motoki-san.”

Haruna blinked at him. “Geez,” he said. He was still looking at Abe, only right then there was some of the same mirth that had been in his voice when he listened to Abe take inventory of his bruises. Something else, too. Something not unlike the expression that had appeared on Sakaeguchi’s face when Abe explained what was lacking about the batting center. Different, but not all that dissimilar. “Geez, Takaya,” Haruna said again, and shook his head.

“What?” 

“Meat’s good for you and all, but you need more than that to have a healthy diet. Let alone to really take care of yourself after practice.”

“I drink plenty of water during and after practice. I _know_ about the risks of dehydration, Motoki-san—”

“ _Geez_ ,” Haruna groaned, with feeling. “That’s not what I meant at all—just. Come on. This is way too sad. Just follow me.”

Abe narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Why?”

“I wanna show you something,” said Haruna impatiently, “so hurry up, Takaya. It’s getting late.”

He went, albeit cautiously. They carried their bags with them out of the locker room, across the field, and into the gymnasium. It was freezing inside, and their footsteps echoed against the glossy wooden floor of the basketball court. Haruna led him under the basket and out through the door on the far side of the room into a hallway. They stopped by an alcove, humming with the sound of ventilated vending machines.

“ _This_ is what I meant,” Haruna said, and pulled out some change from the pocket of his slacks. Then he bought two fat-free milks the vending machine with a selection of drinks; from the health machine he selected two protein powders. “It’s important you drink something like this right after you finish practice,” Haruna was saying, “so that your body can use all the nutrients to build muscle and get stronger.” Abe watched in a bewildered silence as Haruna methodically set the bottles down and tore both packets open. “After a while it’s best to make your own training menu. It’s better than practicing with everyone else all the time, since you know what works best for you and what you need to work on better than the coach, who’s gotta make a menu that works for the entire team. Not you.” The powder was the same color as cough medicine, Abe noted while Haruna poured it into the milk. “Here,” Haruna said, handing the first bottle to Abe. “Put the cap back on and shake it.”

Abe did, dazedly. “Now what?”

“Now you drink it,” Haruna said, and began vigorously shaking his own bottle. “Duh.”

Reluctantly, Abe unscrewed the lid and peered down at its contents. The powder and milk mixed together didn’t quite look like that medicine-like shade of red anymore. Not to say that it seemed appetizing. It didn’t. Abe sniffed at it cautiously, then took a medicinal sip. He winced. 

“I don’t like raspberry,” he muttered.

“C’mon, Takaya. It’s good for you,” said Haruna roundly. He took a swig of his own concoction, and patted Abe bracingly on the back. “Drink up!”

Abe grimaced. So much of a battery’s inner workings boiled down to habit and muscle memory, once both parties knew where they stood. To become a catcher and a pitcher, once the idiosyncrasies and incidentals were ironed out, like the weight of a new watch wound round your wrist was cumbersome, until that too became a familiar, natural weight. Or a thunderclap in his mitt. Like a second skin, the form of their association following its function. He regarded the bottle with dread bubbling in his belly, harrowingly aware that this could very well become a _ritual_. This—this strictly enforced partaking in nauseating concoctions, in lieu of something that was actually necessary.

Under Haruna’s watchful eye, he drank it all down—not that he had much of a choice.

— . . . —

That night, with some distance between him and the experience of drinking the heinous raspberry protein milk, it occurred to him that he may have unwittingly accomplished what he had actually been trying for without success for months.

The thought floored him in the middle of brushing his teeth after dinner. His eyes fixed on his reflection unseeingly, mouth agape, he thought, _Did I get through to him?_ He knew at once that he hadn’t—not in the way he had to before they would become a real battery—but it was a start. The kind of opportunity that, if capitalized upon judiciously, could be built upon to produce real results.

He shut his mouth once toothpaste foam started dribbling out the corner of his lips. He spat, and left the bathroom. The problem of course was in pinpointing what exactly had encouraged Haruna’s confidence. From there he could determine how exactly to do it again, preferably without having to drink another raspberry-flavored _anything_ , though he admitted to himself, with grim resolve, that he would chug one of those with Haruna every day after practice if it meant he’d follow his leads. Maybe work on refining that shoddy slider of his. Not all at once, of course. Getting greedy would do more harm than good. One step at a time, each building on the other. That was the way progress was earned.

Ensconced in his room, he was seized by the sudden, nonsensical urge to inform Sakaeguchi about it. He nearly dismissed it until he realized: yes. Sakaeguchi. Of course. That was what had been different. 

He grabbed his phone, squared his shoulders, and tapped in a message.  


>   
>  **8:47 PM**  
>  **TO:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** More throwing practice
> 
> My team is starting practice an hour and a half later than usual tomorrow. This makes a good chance to practice throwing to second and back again if you’re free after school. Reply as soon as you read this so I know how to plan my free time.
> 
> -Abe Takaya

  
He proofread quickly to make sure that his intentions were clear, and sent it. Then he waited.

The response arrived nearly fifteen minutes later.  


>   
>  **9:01 PM**  
>  **FROM:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** Re: More throwing practice
> 
> i think i am free !
> 
> want to meet in the hall after class ?

  
He had grabbed his phone off the nightstand the instant it vibrated, so he forced himself to type out his response slowly, lest he seem overeager. 

>   
>  **9:04 PM**  
>  **TO:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** Re: More throwing practice
> 
> That works well for me. I’ll see you then. 
> 
> -Abe Takaya
> 
> P.S. Remember to bring your equipment.

  


— . . . —

Despite his best efforts to the contrary, Abe spent the entirety of the next morning all but choked with restlessness. To stifle it he developed a habit of slipping two or three fingers into his pocket, touching his fingertips to the sleek plastic of his cell phone to reassure himself of its presence. Even so, he vented the rest by jiggling his leg, the ache in their muscles duller than before, and turning to look out the window at the field below.

When class was dismissed he took his time shouldering his bag and filing out of the classroom, like he’d done so admirably before sending his response the night before. By the time he meandered out, Sakaeguchi was leaning against the opposite wall. Waiting for him.

“You got here quick,” Abe greeted him, after navigating past the wide semi-circles several of their schoolmates had formed in the middle of the hall.

“Not really. I just got here. First I went to the bathroom, then to the vending machines to get a juice box, and after catching up with some of my classmates I came over to wait for you.”

“Eh? Did the teacher let your class out early?”

The look Sakaeguchi gave him was wobbly, for all of the two seconds before he succumbed to his laughter. “I was just kidding,” he said. “I wasn’t waiting long at all. Don’t worry.”

“Ha. Do all second basemen think they’re funny, or is that just you.”

“Ah, well...we kinda have to be. Someone needs to pick up the slack for all you humorless catcher types, you know.”

“Right,” Abe said dryly.

Still smiling, Sakaeguchi pushed off the wall. “Ready to get going?”

They got going. Sakaeguchi asked after how he’d done on the test, to which Abe responded with a simple ‘Fine,’ unsure about whether or not he should tell Sakaeguchi about how he’d recalled those lines that were difficult to remember. He added that their studying method was effective, figuring it more or less communicated the same sentiment. Sakaeguchi agreed with him. “I usually feel really stressed before I have to take a test,” he admitted. “But I felt good about this one! So? Was that a good idea or what?”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” Sakaeguchi assured him. They were rounding the corner before they reached the shoe lockers, the sunlight spilling welcomingly onto wide stripes of the floor ahead of them. “But _that’s_ rich…” he drew out the sound, and lightly placed his fingers on Abe’s shoulder for emphasis, or to catch up—who could tell, really “...coming from you.”

“Yeah, well—” They stepped into the sunlit intersection. Abe squinted. Everything was bright, the sunlight pouring in through the wide windows and catching on the opaque, cube-shaped glass dividers. It was warm, the large alcove functioning like a greenhouse. Trapping the light and keeping the cool breeze out. If you didn’t have your wits about you, then you might have thought it was later in the season, when the air would be drier but this warm, growing hotter as summer approached. Disoriented, Abe reached blindly out. His knuckles brushed the side of Sakaeguchi’s arm, then skittered to a stop at the crook of Sakaeguchi’s elbow. He blinked, and saw Sakaeguchi’s face dappled in sunlight, shifting along his cheek and forehead as he craned his neck. His feathery hair looked a lighter shade of chestnut in all that light. Abe blinked again. He would not have been able to articulate, before then, what color Sakaeguchi’s hair was, if someone had asked, and he felt woefully unprepared for that eventuality, in retrospect, as that instant of self-awareness passed him by, smooth and featherlight like his knuckles had passed across the skin along Sakaeguchi’s arm. “Well...you—”

“Sakaeguchi-kun?” someone said. “Excuse me, Sakaeguchi-kun.”

They turned, knuckles knocking against crook of elbow. The girl who had addressed them looked right to linger on Abe a moment, nodded at him in greeting, then turned her head left to settle on Sakaeguchi. She wore a practice uniform but no cap, and in her hands she was holding a very large tupperware container. Her smile was small and cordial, but it did not reach her eyes, which looked solemn.

“Oh, Shinooka,” said Sakaeguchi. His grip on Abe’s shoulder loosened, then lifted up and away altogether. “Sorry, I didn’t notice you there.”

“You don’t need to apologize. I’m sorry if I interrupted.”

“Same to you, then. You didn’t interrupt at all. Um. This is Abe.” He gestured toward Abe, who repurposed his arm, still raised, to give Shinooka a short wave. “Abe, this is Shinooka. Have the two of you met?”

Shinooka said, “We haven’t, but our mothers are in the parents’ association together,” at the same time that Abe said, “No. Good to meet you.” She looked startled, and Abe felt vaguely brutish for it. Shinooka recovered only a moment later, and then she smiled, inclining her head in Abe’s direction. “It’s nice to meet you too, Abe-kun.” She was agile, Abe realized. Quick on the recovery. Probably played third or second base, assuming she wasn’t wearing that practice uniform for some other reason...not that he knew why anyone would, if they weren’t on a team.

There was a subtle moeue to Sakaeguchi’s mouth, shifting. Abe’s eyes tracked his gaze. He was looking, Abe realized, at the tupperware Shinooka was holding.

She fidgeted when she noticed them staring. “Um, Sakaeguchi-kun. My mom made this when she—as soon as she heard about what happened.” Her elbows curled to hold up the container for them to see. “It’s oden. She came by just now to leave it with me, so I could give it to you. For you to take home with you, and share with your family.”

“Oh,” said Sakaeguchi quietly. “Oh,” he said again, louder that time, “that’s—” He smiled then, slow and brittle, looking steadfastly not at either of them but the container of oden. “That’s very thoughtful of her. And kind. Thank you so much, from—from all of us. Please tell her that we appreciate it very much.”

“It’s the least we can do,” Shinooka said. “Your parents have done so much for the parents’ association, and they all wish Sakaeguchi-san and your family the very best—not just my mom.”

He looked up at her then, his smile tremulous but steady. “Thank you,” he said again, and reached out to take the food, which she placed gingerly into his open palms. “Um. I could try to get this container back to you soon. When I see you tomorrow. I’ll have it for you then.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” she said gently. “It’s not important at all. Please take your time. If there’s anything else you need, or we could help you with, Sakaeguchi-kun, please know that you can depend on us.”

He bowed his head low. The angle steeped his features in sharp planes of shadow. “Thank you very much.”

Shinooka returned the gesture. “Please pass our best wishes to your family,” she said to him, “and remember—please let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.” She straightened, then turned her gaze on Abe. The weight of her gaze startled him, taken aback by her acknowledgment after her exchange with Sakaeguchi. He felt like he had been privy to something he should not have been present for, and felt a keen stab of inadequacy for it. Then Shinooka bowed to him, said, “Abe-kun, it was very nice to meet you,” and, righting herself, addressed the both of them. “I’m sorry again for interrupting. Goodbye.” She took her leave.

Abe watched her go, then turned and watched as Sakaeguchi stood up straight. His face was schooled blank. There were questions caught in Abe’s throat—of course there were—but he could not bring himself to dislodge and voice them. The quiet hung thick and impenetrable between them. He did not know what he wanted to say, or what was expected of him. Down the hall came the chattering of three or four classmates approaching. Receding, then, as they turned down a different corridor. Awash in all that light, the two of them stood silent and still.

At length, Sakaeguchi carefully adjusted his hold on the tupperware until he was gripping it more securely, with a hand at each end, as Shinooka had held it before. After he did this, he said, “Would it be okay with you if we didn’t go to the field today?”

“Oh.”

“Sorry. I should really get this home before it starts to go bad. Maybe some other time.”

Abe felt his expression on the precipice of falling, but fought it back. He did his best to imitate Sakaeguchi, and kept his face and voice level. “That’s—fine.” His shoulders were hunched. “Yeah. You won’t have time between doing that and getting to practice after. Some other time then. ”

“Sorry,” Sakaeguchi said again. He still wouldn’t look at him. “I’ll message you about rescheduling tonight, if I can.” He walked toward the door. Just as he passed the prism cubes, Abe found his voice again.

“Sakaeguchi!” he called, but when he turned to face him he knew there was nothing he could say to bridge the distance still widening between them, even though they were both standing still. On the field the previous Sunday they had stood as far as they could from each other without leaving the infield and shouted tanka before throwing the ball, their voices so clear that they could pick out the mistakes and pick off where the other left off. Here there were less than six paces separating them, but—but...Abe said, “Make sure you’re careful on the way to your house,” his voice level, devoid of inflection. “Your hands aren’t free. Keep yourself balanced.”

“I will,” said Sakaeguchi. He gave Abe another of those brittle smiles, and left.

— . . . —

At the dinner table that evening he very nearly asked his mother whether she knew anything pertinent about the Sakaeguchis’ situation, seeing as how Shinooka had mentioned that all three of their mothers were members of the parents’ association, but quickly reconsidered when he saw she’d prepared an unusual array of vegetables for dinner and was therefore liable to overserve his portion, especially if she was cross with him, intentionally throwing off his meat-to-other-foods ratio, then cheerfully reprimanding him for not eating when he took his plate to the sink.

“It looks good,” he said, trying for a neutral tone. It came out like a mutter instead, the day’s disappointment souring his tone.

“Thank you for that compliment, Taka,” she said, scooping more vegetables out of the pan. “You can have two servings, for being so kind.”

He scowled at the plate she set in front of him. The vegetables had been poured over the steak, which looked diminished and anemic beneath the melange of oranges and greens. Looking at it made him think of the slim Hatogaya folder in coach’s cabinet, which he had revisited in consternation that afternoon to kill all the time left on his hands. Opening and closing it again and again, as though he were expecting something different the next time.

Yes. Anemic. Anemic was exactly the right word for it. It was a baseless preoccupation; a poor investment of his energy. Abe knew, now that he no longer had to prove anything to anyone but Haruna, that a lack of data evidenced prioritization. Why waste time on a team that stood no chance of beating them? There were far more pressing concerns. Volunteering to collect and analyze data seemed as good a bet as any to prove his ability back then. As a regular, he saw it for what it was. Extracurricular at best, and Todakita wouldn’t make it past the second round with extracurriculars alone. The same was true for him.

From the TV there came the tinny roar of the crowd. Third run. “See that, Taka?” his father was saying. “Look what happened! The catcher wasn’t ‘fastidious’ enough with his pitch-calling, and now they’ve given up two runs in a single inning.”

“Huh. Yeah.” 

He shifted distractedly in his chair, and picked up his chopsticks. In his pocket, his phone dug into his thigh. His father shared this oratory habit with that particular kind of English teacher who all but inserted air quotes around the new vocabulary they expected their students to absorb whenever they came up, except Abe had associated that bit of pedagogy with his father and their dinnertime spectating long before he realized that some of his English teachers often resorted to it in class. It was lost on most audiences.

“‘Huh. Yeah,’ eh…? You seem distracted,” said his father around a mouthful of meat.

“I’m not. They scored their third run because the catcher wasn’t fastidious enough. Second run this inning.”

“That’s not what I meant. You’re listening to what I said, but you’re not watching the game. Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“Then why don’t you focus on the game with your old man?”

“I _am_.”

“Don’t antagonize him, dear,” his mother put in, then swiveled toward the hall to call, “Shun-chan!” who responded with something about not being able to save during boss battles—whatever that meant—to which she replied that his food wouldn’t keep nearly as well if he didn’t hurry up, and that if he complained about it being cold she would cut back on his video games time for the rest of the week. A few seconds later, Shun called that he was on his way. In two minutes.

“I’m not ‘antagonizing’ him,” his father grumbled. “I just want to know what’s wrong with him, is all.”

“Nothing’s wrong with me!”

“See? Taka’s perfectly fine. Just let him brood. Not in two minutes, Shun-chan! Now! Or the food kaa-chan made for you will get cold!”

“Fine…” said his father.

Abe chewed, dolefully, already picking up and cramming another cube of steak into his mouth. It tasted good, but he was eager to return to his room. His father was pretty ‘fastidious’ himself when he wanted to get something out of him; he wasn’t the type to ignore his own advice. 

He had just managed to finish half the steak, and was about to start on the next fourth, when his phone vibrated. He froze mid-chew, then cast a look around the kitchen. His mother was occupied at the stove, and his father’s gaze was focused on the TV for a time. Better to get it over with. He pulled his phone out and, using the tabletop for cover, read the message.  


>   
>  **8:38 PM**  
>  **FROM:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** rescheduling
> 
> hey . sorry again about having to cancel out of the blue like that … are you free tomorrow ?

  
That was all he sent. Like he had said he would that afternoon, but all the leftover white space rankled. It felt like the lack of an explanation ought to have frustrated Abe on principle, but he was unsure whether he felt more angry or relieved. What would he say, once he found out? Was it worth knowing? He was still at a loss. Part of him wanted to be told, but it seemed...no. It was unnecessary, even if Sakaeguchi saw fit to confide in him—which he clearly didn’t, judging by that terse message. It was none of his business.

“Taka,” his mother chided him, “no phones at the table!” 

He’d been staring down at his lap openly for almost a whole minute. Of course she’d noticed. He tsked softly at himself for being so indiscreet, and pocketed his phone. “Sorry,” he said, though he quickly pulled it back out again once he’d checked to make sure she had stopped watching him with that baleful look of hers.  


>   
>  **8:41 PM**  
>  **TO:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** Re: rescheduling
> 
> No. I have practice tomorrow after school.
> 
> -Abe Takaya

  
It took some restraint to keep himself from adding, _Don’t you have practice yourself?_ at the end there. He balanced his phone face down atop his thigh, and resumed eating. Far be it from him to prompt Hatogaya to practice regularly, if they weren’t doing so already, which would explain why they lost in the first or second rounds of every tournament they’d played in for the past four years, now wouldn’t it?

When his phone vibrated again, it caught him unawares and very nearly fell off its perch.  


>   
>  **8:44 PM**  
>  **FROM:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** Re: rescheduling
> 
> ok .

  
He managed to tear his gaze away and pocket his phone in record time, spurred on more by a harried sense of guilt than caution. Its onset was sudden. It disarmed him slowly, left him exhausted. The memory of their impromptu practice, the unseasonable warmth of Sakaeguchi’s fingers on his. The efficacy of his advice. He set his jaw and began stacking his plates, hardly noticing it when Shun finally came in, five minutes later than he said he would.

“Sorry, kaa-san,” said Shun contritely, and took his seat. He picked up his chopsticks, looked at the TV screen, then at Abe. “Is nii-san okay?”

“Beats me,” said their father at the same time that Abe snapped, “I’m fine!” He nabbed a piece of steak off Shun’s plate as though to make this abundantly clear, and was up and out of his seat, chewing rigorously and balancing his plates on his way over to the sink, before Shun could cry to their mother about it.

Out in the hallway, safely out of the range of Shun’s plaintive cries and his mother’s reprimands, he fished his phone out again. He swallowed the morsel of steak, locked himself in the bathroom on the pretense of brushing his teeth, and made an effort to stop his brain from hiccoughing. He couldn’t skip practice. He wouldn’t. Especially now that he was back in the bullpen. His fingers stuttered on the keys.

Fortunately, an incoming message spared him the trouble. The ensuant vibrations concussed some feeling into his fingers.  


>   
>  **8:46 PM**  
>  **FROM:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** Re: rescheduling
> 
> how about after practice though ? would you be ok with meeting up with me then ? you could come over to my house .

  
Upon reading that his remorse went very nearly tender. As raw as a freshly skinned knee, a patch of skin purpling. His fingers moved on the keys immediately, before his thoughts could settle back into their usual manner of motion, and his reservations could reassert themselves. 

>   
>  **8:46 PM**  
>  **TO:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** Re: rescheduling
> 
> I can do that.
> 
> -Abe Takaya

He didn’t have to wait long. Less than a minute after he watched the animated envelope fade into the virtual distance, his phone vibrated once again.

>   
>  **8:47 PM**  
>  **FROM:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** Re: rescheduling
> 
> great ! meet you at the convenience store again ?

  
He swallowed hard, and returned the favor with a quick response of his own. 

>   
>  **8:47 PM**  
>  **TO:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** Re: rescheduling
> 
> OK.
> 
> -Abe Takaya

  


— . . . —

The next evening Abe arrived at the convenience store prepossessed by the certainty that he was unprepared for whatever would transpire once he accompanied Sakaeguchi to his house. His inexperience with those particular circumstances was part of it, but the short notice was by far the worst agitator. He could have made inquiries about what to expect, or what was expected of him, if he’d had more time. As it was he could only wheedle an extra ten minutes of computer time from his mother, who had been upset at him for divesting Shun of his food again but surprised enough by the news that he would be visiting an acquaintance’s house after practice the next day to grant him permission for both requests—though he’d had to show her the corroborating texts for her trouble. Between their sluggish internet connection and the search engine’s capriciousness with respect to his diction (Did you mean: what to expect the first time you go to a _friend’s_ house ), he could only ascertain that he should remove his shoes and ‘politely apologize for the intrusion’ to ‘announce your presence to those already inside’ upon entering the house, which he knew already.

Beyond those obvious tidbits he learned little of the proper protocol, and while he would usually derive enough confidence from his Todakita regular catcher-grade ‘adaptability’ to approach the situation authoritatively, the foreknowledge that this visit would be important nagged at him. The guilt from the night before informed his anxiety, but not all of it. All he had to show for it was another bruise on his chest from a fastball he had missed, in his preoccupation. He stuck a hand up his shirt and thumbed it gingerly—to anchor himself, before he headed inside.

He sighted Sakaeguchi before Sakaeguchi noticed him. Like the first time they’d run into each other there the previous week, he was standing by the manga shelves. He seemed to be reading something. Abe stopped at the mouth of the aisle, observing him. Sakaeguchi had his back to him, so his gaze lingered at the set of his spindly shoulders. They were bunched together, high and tight. Somehow the sight of them was enough of an impetus to close the distance between them and tap him on the shoulder. He said, “Oi, Sakaeguchi.”

The smile Sakaeguchi gave him, once he’d pivoted around to face him, came slow and familiar. “Hi,” he said, and replaced the manga on the shelf.

“Hey,” said Abe.

They left without much delay or much else said. “We have to go pick up my little brother from baseball practice first,” was what Sakaeguchi told Abe before they mounted their bicycles, “but his school’s on the way home. It won’t take long at all.” Abe followed Sakaeguchi right at the intersection where he would have gone straight to continue on home. It was cool with the sun dipping low on the horizon. The steady rush of wind made Abe’s eyes leak at the corners and his lips dry out, but he followed without complaint, his mind peaceably blank with the cold and small exertion of pedaling.

Abe knew their destination by the way Sakaeguchi slowed to dismount once they arrived. It was an elementary school he’d never visited before but faintly remembered hearing about during his days in boys’ league. He followed suit, and together they walked their bikes to the adjoining field. At this hour the grass was tinted orange, the fence’s shadow extending far. When Sakaeguchi laid his bike against the fence and walked forward toward the opening in the chain-link, Abe hung back. He sucked in his lips and traced his tongue against the sharp, chapped skin, biting down on their edges to peel it back. A short distance away Sakaeguchi was bowing to a man Abe assumed was the coach, and a few minutes later began walking back toward him with a smaller, younger boy in tow.

“That’s Abe,” Sakaeguchi was telling his brother. “The guy I told you about this morning. Remember? Abe, this is my brother Yukihiro.” At that he nudged his brother forward a little. “Say hi, Yuki.”

Yukihiro stared at Abe from behind his brother. His eyes were very austere. “Hello,” he said at last.

“Hey. Good to meet you.”

Sakaeguchi chuckled, short and a tad breathless from the ride. “You two are pretty similar, actually. Quiet most of the time, but you say a lot whenever you do start talking.” Yukihiro elbowed Sakaeguchi in the side, as though to chastise him for divulging that information about him. which made Sakaeguchi laugh a little more, especially when he caught sight of Abe’s deadpan expression. “Okay, okay. Let’s go home.”

They walked the rest of the way, with Abe trailing a bit behind them. Sakaeguchi kept asking about his brother’s day, and when Yukihiro responded it was in a low, quiet, tone, so Abe could only hear one end of the conversation. Questions, but none of the answers, save for an out-and-out refusal to “Wanna ride my bike home?” and eventual acquiescence to “Want me to carry your bag for you?” once Sakaeguchi rephrased it as “C’mon, you must be tired after practice!” and had all but snatched the kiddie-sized duffel from his small shoulders. Yukihiro bore this as though it were an indignity, his gaze straight ahead and decidedly not on his older brother.

Sakaeguchi slung it over his head so that it fell cross-shoulder. “You doing okay back there?” he said.

“I’m fine,” Abe said.

“Hang in there! We’re almost home. Just a little bit more!”

“You’re overdoing it. It’s not like we’re running laps.”

“Ah, sorry. I forgot you Todakita guys have superior endurance than the rest of us. My bad.”

Abe was willing to wager this was factual, on average, but did not say so. Then, concerned that his hanging back may have been misconstrued as flagging, he quickened his pace and closed some of the distance, the metronomic clicking and clunking of his bicycle’s spokes rising in tempo to overtake Sakaeguchi’s. Both brothers looked back at him. Yukihiro’s glance was quick and away, but Sakaeguchi’s lingered for a second or two longer. His smile had been wry when he’d first turned his head, but it shifted more the longer it held, growing warm, then shuttering, in the instant before they each looked away.

Sure enough, they turned into their driveway not five minutes later. The house seemed to be of a more traditional design than his own from the outside, and his first look at its interior, once Sakaeguchi succeeded in extricating a set of keys from his pants pocket and opened the door, confirmed the impression. Past the threshold the hallway stretched long and shadowed. Faint sunlight suffused the paper screen doors running its length, the thin white material aglow with the last of dusk’s dim light. Save for the faroff hum of the air conditioning unit, the house was silent. Entering it felt like stepping into a place undisturbed, and Abe hesitated on the porch as Sakaeguchi and Yukihiro walked in. A flick of the light switch illuminated the house. Yukihiro was quick in removing his shoes, contorting on one foot and then the other to do so, and when he placed them in the shoe rack he took his bag back from Sakaeguchi, their movements easy and routine. 

“Go ahead and take a bath, Yuki,” Sakaeguchi told him. “I’ll have dinner heated up by the time you’re done.”

“Okay,” said Yukihiro, and padded down the hall and out of sight.

Sakaeguchi took the position he’d abandoned by the shoe rack, and turned to address Abe, who was still on the porch. “Come on in,” Sakaeguchi said as he toed off his sneakers. After tucking them into his alcove on the shoe rack, he held out his hand. Abe stared at it in incomprehension until Sakaeguchi said, “Give me your bag. I’ll go ahead and put it in my room,” after which Abe did as he was asked, embarrassed for needing clarification. “Oof,” said Sakaeguchi. “It’s heavy….”

“My catcher’s gear’s in there too.”

“No wonder you’re always so nasty then.” He hefted it onto his shoulder with some difficulty, eying the bemused, downward tilt of Abe’s lips while he did. Then he stepped past Abe, and shut and locked the door behind them. “Anyway, you can put your shoes in there too. I’ll just be a minute. You can wait for me in the kitchen. It’s down the hall, to the right. Can’t miss it.” He left Abe to remove his shoes, turning left at the end of the hall.

The wood floors were cool. They sapped heat from the soles of his feet through his socks. He took a few quick steps into the hall, then shuddered to a stop. “Sorry for the intrusion,” Abe called, having belatedly remembered protocol. He received no reply.

The kitchen was as easy to find as Sakaeguchi had told him it would be. It was also empty and dark. Abe hovered just outside, unsure. From there he could make out the vague shapes of pans hanging from the ceiling, the electrical rumbling of the refrigerator. In the air, the peculiar smell of another’s life permeating the air, thicker now that he was in deeper than the front door.

Sakaeguchi found him rooting blindly along the walls for a light switch. He was doing so while balanced on one foot, leaning slightly out of the threshold in the cautiously deliberate manner of one who believed anything could jump out at him from the unfamiliar shadows—and fully expected something would at any moment, in fact. Upon seeing him Sakaeguchi began to chortle, so that Abe, who had not heard him approach, nearly tripped and banged his head against some manner of unseen obstacle. But Sakaeguchi caught his elbow quickly, with that second baseman’s agility. His other hand gripped the sleeve of Abe’s shirt, tightly, until they regained their equilibrium. “You okay there?” said Sakaeguchi with a chortle.

“Of course,” Abe grumbled, still teetering. His voice was admirably level, considering, but he had to place a hand on Sakaeguchi’s shoulder to steady himself. 

They were face to face in the darkness, and seemed to notice simultaneously. Their grips eased incrementally, so that they let go of each other at the same time. Sakaeguchi took a step backward, then two forward. He placed a hand on the side of Abe’s arm, as if to reorient himself or show Abe where he was, and then turned sideways to brush past him into the kitchen.

The overhead lights flickered on. At the counter, Sakaeguchi was standing on tiptoes to open a hanging cupboard. “Want something to drink?” he said. His voice was odd, but when he punctuated the question by turning to look at Abe, a glass in each hand, his face looked the same as ever, if a bit flushed.

“Sure.”

“Is Pocari Sweat fine?”

“Yeah.”

Abe thumbed the elbow he had cupped without knowing what else to do with it, facing but not really looking at Sakaeguchi as he opened the refrigerator, pulled out the liter of Pocari Sweat, uncapped it, poured them out two cupfuls. He took the glass when Sakaeguchi offered it, and let him usher him over to the table, where he set both the bottle and his own glass down. From there Sakaeguchi walked back to lean into the open refrigerator. When he straightened again he was holding the same tupperware Shinooka had given him at the school the day before.

At the counter Sakaeguchi was ladling out the broth into three bowls, pausing every now and then to scoop out pieces of boiled eggs, daikon, and what looked like octopus in the ladle, and portion them out equally. “You like oden, right?” he said. “It’s really good. Shinooka-san really outdid herself.”

It was the first time he’d alluded to what had happened the previous day. “She’s on the softball team?” said Abe, figuring the conversation would come around to the elephant in the room soon if he did.

“Shinooka? Yeah. Shortstop, I think. She’s pretty good, from what I’ve heard!” He essayed a conspiratorial tone, and turned away from his work to give him a grin to match. “Why? D’you think she’s...cute?”

Abe frowned, half-consideringly, into his glass. The other half was mostly exasperation at the way the conversation was going off course. “She’s—alright.”

“Ouch. That’s harsh. Shinooka’s really nice, you know.”

“I haven’t thought about it. There’ve been other things on my mind. Besides, I don’t have time to think about things like that.”

“Uh-huh.” Sakaeguchi was carefully placing each bowl into the microwave, so as not to spill any of the broth. “The work of a Todakita catcher is never done. There’s always something left to accomplish in battery town.”

“That’s...true,” Abe agreed, and pressed on despite Sakaeguchi’s snickering, “but not all of it’s been about catching.” All the rather heavy-handed significance he’d inflected into the tail-end of that statement seemed to hit home, because Sakaeguchi’s snickers died down immediately afterward. There was the chime of the microwave as he punched in the reheating time, but nothing else. 

Instead of pushing the matter, Abe remained silent, watchful. He’d planned to lead him to the topic, not browbeat him into divulging everything about it. Let Sakaeguchi broach the subject now, he thought with an edge of desperation, and waited as patiently as he could.

The microwave worked noisily, the unbalanced tray shifting on the mechanism with every few revolutions. Sakaeguchi had gotten them three sets of chopsticks from a drawer, and approached the table now to lay them out. He did this silently, tolerating Abe’s expectant stare, until he nudged the last chopsticks into place and said, “That’s part of why I wanted to invite you here,” and paused to suck in a shuddering breath. “I feel like I owe you an explanation.”

Abe said nothing, but felt his legs go tense underneath the table.

“Well. No. It’s not just that,” Sakaeguchi amended, “but that I want to tell you too. Not just—because I should.” He gave Abe a searching look, and met his eyes directly for the first time since they had arrived. “But because I want to. You’ve been—you’ve actually been a good—”

Before he could finish the microwave began to blare out its alarm. The food was ready. But instead of going immediately he stayed where he was. They waited it out. His hand, Abe noticed, had grasped the chopsticks he’d nudged into place a moment before. 

It took a moment, his eyes downcast again, for him to keep going. “My mom is sick. She has been for a while, but she—her condition got worse recently, and she had to go stay in the hospital. What happened yesterday with Shinooka was because of that. Shinooka-san is a friend of my mom’s from the parents’ association, and she was kind enough to make oden to help my dad, my siblings, and me out when she heard.” His eyes, when he looked up again, caught the light strangely, but did not overflow. “Sorry that I didn’t tell you yesterday, or sooner. I guess it just—felt good to hang out with someone who didn’t treat me weird because of it again, and when it looked like you would find out I got a little scared. But I think you should know the truth. I just—I hope we can keep acting like this, instead of….” He trailed off there. After a moment, he shrugged and smiled sadly at the space over his shoulder.

“That’s—” A hard shudder ran through him. His blunt nails dug into the dry skin at his elbow. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

Sakaeguchi laughed, halting but genuine. “Would it be weird if I said it makes me pretty happy to hear you say that?”

“No,” said Abe, after a moment of considering it. “I don’t think it is. It’s not. If it were me, I wouldn’t want that either.”

They both heard the sincerity to it plainly. Their eyes met, and Abe felt something rise tight in his chest, thick in his throat. Like the guilt from the night before, except this feeling had been excised of regret and guilt altogether. All that remained was the other part. A sensitivity along the whole of his body, as though it was attuned to every one of Sakaeguchi’s expressions. His words, the callouses on his palms from playing baseball. The soft skin along his arms. There it was. That tenderness again. Everything, keenly felt. It was—oh, it was alarming, was what it was. The way he felt pressure building behind his own eyes now, the clammy vice of his hand around his elbow doubling, somehow, as Sakaeguchi’s, so that he remembered the feeling from before with a startlingly visceral immediacy. 

He hunched up his shoulders against it, and Sakaeguchi thankfully took the opportunity to fetch the edon from the microwave, giving Abe the opportunity to scour each of his eye sockets with the heel of his palm. He swallowed hard to force that insensible mass back down. By the time Sakaeguchi returned to set the bowl in front of him, he had regained control of himself. He thanked him, in a perfectly passable tone of voice, and if Sakaeguchi noticed something was off, he said nothing of it. Just in time too, as it turned out, because Yukihiro entered the kitchen just as Sakaeguchi laid the second bowl down on the table, the muted slap of his bare feet against the wood floors hardly enough of a warning to school his expression back to normal, had he still been in that state.

“Did you have a nice bath, Yuki?” Sakaeguchi asked lightly.

Yukihiro shrugged by way of answer. “It was okay,” he clarified.

“I’m glad,” said Sakaeguchi, and took his seat at the table. “Thanks for the food!” 

“Thanks for the food!”

They ate in much the same way that they’d walked to the house earlier: in what would have been silence, for the most part, if it hadn’t been for Sakaeguchi asking them questions and prompting them to speak. Like that afternoon in the dugout Abe ate quickly and with little sense of self-consciousness, ravenous after practice and the extra exertion of traveling a mile or two more than he would have if he’d just gone straight home. Yukihiro ate at a similar pace, but Sakaeguchi was more measured in his bites, pausing long enough between mouthfuls to ask questions, teasing conversation out of them. Abe’s skin still felt like it was buzzing all over, the hairs along his nape, arms, and legs on end. All he could do was wait it out, so he did that, keeping his eyes on his meal, his responses to the questions Sakaeguchi would ask him issued curtly and gruffly. He did not trust his voice all that much. Not yet.

After finishing their meal they piled the bowls in the sink to wash later, and went down the hall to the room Sakaeguchi shared with Yukihiro, carrying their refilled glasses of Pocari Sweat. Both siblings had looked at Abe askance when he told them he didn’t play much of those things at all. Besides, it was already dark out. He couldn’t suggest they grab their gear double back to the elementary school field to see if it was still open. If it had been feasible, he would have.

“My brother hogs them all the time.” This wasn’t a lie, precisely, and his admission seemed to do the trick of restoring that atmosphere Sakaeguchi had asked him they preserve. Abe counted it as a small victory.

“Alright, alright,” Sakaeguchi said loftily, affecting magnanimity. “We’ll play _Super Smash Bros_ and give Abe here some time to learn the controls. One of our controllers isn’t working, but we can take turns.”

“Yuuto,” said Yukihiro, pausing at the doorway to their room. “Can I go to dad’s study? I have to write a composition.”

“Oh, um. Sure, Yuki. What’s it about?”

“‘My favorite hobby.’” He scratched at the nape of his neck, and for a moment Abe thought of the way Sakaeguchi had done the exact same thing. “It’s really video games, but baseball sounds a lot better.”

“You’re probably right,” Sakaeguchi said. “Well, call me if you need any help.”

“Okay.”

“And leave the door open!”

“O- _kay_.”

He slid the screen door ajar. “Come on.” 

Inside, Sakaeguchi turned the light on and went straight for the far wall, where he started fiddling with an old TV and a box-shaped game console. Abe took a few steps forward, got his bearings. It was a small room. Slightly messy. By the TV there was a nightstand on one side, and a closet to the other. There were two beds, one running parallel to the screen door, about two or three paces from it. The other was near a window, the curtains drawn. On the wall behind that bed’s headboard there was a movie poster, in English, of a white man and a dark-skinned woman, standing close together with pistols aloft.

The TV hissed to life with a crackle of static. Sakaeguchi noticed him staring when he came to hand him a controller. “Have you seen that movie?” he said, indicating the poster. _007: Die Another Day_. “It’s pretty awesome,” he carried on when Abe shook his head. “Halle Berry’s in it. Wait—have you heard of Halle Berry? No!? Oh, man. She’s the best. We’ve definitely gotta watch it, then.”

“I thought we were playing video games.”

“Haha, I didn’t mean _now_. But another day? Definitely! Maybe on a night you don’t have practice the next morning? So you could sleep over, if you wanted.”

Abe ducked his head to hide the peculiar expression on his face. Its shape was new and unknown even to him. He took the controller. Gripped it tight. “That may be possible,” he managed to get out.

“Cool,” said Sakaeguchi. "Just let me know."

They sat on the floor and got to playing. According to Sakaeguchi, it was a fighting game with a bevy of ‘beloved classic video game characters.’ Abe vaguely recognized some of them from the plastic cases Shun kept in the rec room at home. It was difficult to play. The game mechanics were fantastical. Totally unrealistic, and once he was confident in his voice again he complained about this at length to Sakaeguchi, who found all this patently hilarious. He laughed and laughed at Abe’s indictments of the game’s skewed physics and clumsy, counterintuitive controls, somehow locating the gumption in all his mirth to thoroughly trounce Abe in every match.

At one point he paused the game to demand, “Why do you even _play_ these?”

“They always helps me relax,” said Sakaeguchi. “It’s like getting sucked into a story. If there isn’t one, then I can make it up. It’s not my story, but it is. Because I’m the one playing it.” He laughed self-consciously. “Sorry. That didn’t make any sense, did it?”

“Not really,” Abe said honestly.

“Fair enough. Now unpause it so I can finish beating you up again.”

It was an all-around ludicrous experience, and doubly so for its inherent perniciousness. Almost forty-five minutes gone after ten or twelve matches, according to his cell phone. It was absurd. Absolutely sinister. They put down their controllers. He sagged backward, dazedly levering himself upright with his arms, his head tilted up at the motionless ceiling fan. His eyes ached, and his thought processes were muddled. There was no discernible flow to them. Just stuttered bits and pieces, like he’d just run several stadia without a single break. To his right Sakaeguchi was hunched forward, his palms meeting the patch of floor hemmed in by his crossed legs. His shoulders jutted starkly out underneath the layers of fabric, and for a moment Abe felt his tongue thicken with the suggestion he stretch the tension out. He did not voice it for a while, aware that day’s events had conspired to knock him out of equilibrium, but it stuck there, heavily, until he had no choice but to say it. 

“Your shoulders look very tense. You should stretch to loosen them up. Like you’re supposed to always do before practice.” He considered the possibility that Hatogaya taught its players substandard stretches, and decided that it would be a real shame if Sakaeguchi injured himself. “I can show you some of the ones we do to warm up at Todakita. If the stretches you do at Hatogaya aren’t any good.”

Sakaeguchi’s shoulders jerked, then they squared. He pushed at the floor with one foot, pivoting his body around so that he was facing Abe. Then he just sat there for a long while, watching Abe watch him with an intent look on his face. 

“Do you want to?” said Abe. “Because if you do, we’re going to have to stand up.”

“Abe.”

“What?”

Sakaeguchi was fiddling with the drawstrings of his hoodie. Finally, he said, “There’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you. About what’s been going on with me.”

“Eh?” He straightened, pivoting to face Sakaeguchi like he was facing him. “Okay. So what is it?”

“It’s about me playing baseball.”

“All right…. Go ahead.”

He took a deep, steadying breath. “I haven’t been for the past week-and-a-half.”

“What do you mean?” Abe said, disquieted. Then, with the growing conviction that this was another of his inane attempts at a joke: “Che. Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t fool me. Of course you’ve played in the last week-and-a-half. On Sunday you and I went to the school grounds after our team practices, and we—”

“Aside from that, I mean. I haven’t been going to practice. My coach knows what’s going on, so it’s not like I’m skipping out on them, but—” he spread his hands wide “—I haven’t been going.” He had the grace to look down at the floor as he added, “You’re the only person I’ve told.”

That didn’t make any sense, and Abe opened his mouth to tell Sakaeguchi so—but he remembered, with aching clarity: he didn’t have his duffel bag with him when they’d met at the convenience store earlier. Then there was his unbelievably open schedule. His easy confirmation that Hatogaya’s coach let them have weekend afternoons off as well—and Abe had never followed up on that like he’d meant to, too caught up in the tension with Haruna and Sakaeguchi’s invitation to practice with him to let it occupy more than a corner of his mind.

“Why would you do that?” he said. “You said playing in the Seniors was good practice for high school.”

“I did say that, but—things are different now. My dad is either working or with mom at—at the hospital, and my sister is applying to university soon. She’s going to cram school, and sometimes she goes to see mom at the hospital after too, so I have to make sure Yuki’s taken care of.” Sakaeguchi’s voice sounded full, like it was on the verge of brimming over. “And it’s not—I can do it. I can still practice and go to games and pick Yuki up and go see mom when I can. His coach is understanding. He lets him stay a little later so I have time to get there. And I’m not a regular, so my team doesn’t count on me like they would if I was, but—it feels...it would feel wrong, playing without any of them there to watch me.”

“Why are,” Abe began. His throat was very dry. He swallowed, and tried again. “Why are you telling me about this? What are you saying?”

Sakaeguchi was quiet for a while. “I don’t know,” he said softly. His smile, when he looked up at Abe, was rueful. “You looked funny when I saw you in the convenience store that day, and I recognized you from school. It was—I just. All that week I would take my bag to school like I was going to to go practice after, but I couldn’t. Even though it felt weird not to play baseball at all, I kept doing it. I kept avoiding practice and trying to decide what to do about—this, before I told my family. I’ve been playing baseball since elementary school, so it’s hard to even think about stopping. You know?” 

Abe did not know. He had never considered stopping. Not once.

“I’m sorry. I guess I was...trying to learn how to let go of it all along. So I wanted—I want to thank you, Abe. For playing with me, and helping me make up my mind. I knew it when I saw your—that day when we practiced together, and I saw how hard you worked to play the way you want to. I...couldn’t work that hard. Not the way things are now. So it’s better if I quit. That’s what I’ve decided.”

Later, when he replayed this conversation in his head, turning it over again and again, he would think of all things he could have said instead. The words better suited to filling the silence that seemed to swell and take a physical space in Sakaeguchi’s room. 

He should have said, _You already have. I threw to second because you were there to catch it, and I caught the ball all the times you threw it to me. You worked as hard as I did that day._

Or: _I think now that there’s more than one way to work to get what you want, and yours isn’t bad, or wrong. It even worked for me._

Or: _Why are you punishing yourself for something you can't change, or do anything about, when it hasn’t happened yet?_

Or, wounded by a creeping guilt: _You spent all this time listening to me tell you about Haruna and what’s wrong with our battery, and now you’re telling me it was all so you could convince yourself to_ quit _?_

His fingers curled in on themselves, away from the controller. Something he had never told anyone was that the second pitcher he was ever paired with had kept the bad habit of placing his throwing hand near his ear instead of extending it all the way back, and when Abe corrected his form the boy looked at him with his startled, round eyes and said, “Thank you.” The gesture had caught Abe off guard, and instead of following up on the suggestion with more tips he’d only nodded and gone back to the catcher’s box. But the first few times his partner tried pitching with proper form the ball was denuded of its customary precision after it left his hand, dropping too soon or not at all, and he looked at Abe as though he suspected he’d played a nasty trick on him. By the next day he was back to throwing the way he always had, warier of Abe’s counsel, and Abe remembered thinking, If he didn’t mean it then why did he say thank you? From then on he knew that their battery, such as it was, would never be as good as it had been before Abe had offered his advice. His pitcher distrusted him because the results were not immediate. And at the very moment Abe felt the loss most keenly one of the parents snapped a photo of him, crying just off home plate in his small red gear, a copy of which his mother kept in her purse to show to the other parents in the stands during his games.

That—that was what he felt like now. Tricked into vulnerability by their gratitude; left reeling in reaction to its loss after they redacted it. Reminded of it for the months and years that followed by an old polaroid, or, he imagined, by the sight of the school practice field as he walked by or craned his head too far in the classroom, so that it spread out in his periphery, below and just outside the window. He had been offered Sakaeguchi’s gratitude for something he did not intend, and was horrified to learn he had a hand in causing it. What had happened between them now, at the tail-end of the past few days, was different. He knew it was different. But not nearly enough to stop the nauseous, familiar pain from welling up in his chest.

Look what happens, Taka, when you let up on your ‘fastidiousness.’ Once you lose it, everything else goes with it.

“That’s not what I wanted,” he said. 

“I know,” Sakaeguchi said. “That’s why I’m sorry.”

His understanding of his surroundings dimmed. In his vision Sakaeguchi’s face swam out of focus. That was it. Wasn’t it? This was something he’d never thought to expect. It was impossible to predict. He hadn’t thought to want anything from it. Because it had come so easily. Without any discernible drawbacks. List or no. Even now he did not know what he wanted from it. Only that, oh. It certainly wasn’t this. Anything but this. This, which made all of Sakaeguchi's laughter seem cruel and mocking. This, which reduced Abe, and all he’d divulged, to a crude implement. A means to an end.

That was what he knew. This was what was certain; he found his tongue. With it came terrible clarity. “If you’d told me about this,” he said. “If I’d known this is what you were doing from the beginning—then I never would have said yes. To any of it.”

Sakaeguchi’s mouth opened. Sakaeguchi’s eyes went wide. Abe looked, as long as he was able, until he had to avert his gaze. He averted it. Heard him take a shallow breath. Two shallow breaths. Abe’s fingertips curled and unfurled against the floorboards, growing cool. The TV continued playing the same ostentatious theme from the game on a loop. Finally, Sakaeguci took a deeper breath. Deep enough to say, “I know,” because even if there was more to it he’d said it in the utmost sincerity. He understood what he’d uttered, knew that Sakaeguchi did also. 

He felt and heard when Sakaeguchi got up, after a long moment, more than he saw it happen. The floorboard creaked. There was the sweep of his palms rustling down his pants. “Um,” he said. “I should go check on Yuki.” His voice sounded crisp, even. “Excuse me.”

The air stirred as he walked past, then was still.

For a time his stare was sightless. It was hard to focus on his surroundings. Such was the white noise in his head. But after a while the room resolved itself, slowly, by the wan, bluish glow of the TV. Next to him, the glass of Pocari Sweat. Sakaeguchi’s less than a pace away. Both mostly full; both long since tepid. He thought, thought he should find his things. Take his leave. He got to his feet, stiffly, off-balance, and made his way over to the closet, where he’d seen the zippered end of his duffel sticking out of it.

When he bent and pulled the strap snagged on something, so that when he dragged it out Sakaeguchi’s cleats came clattering along with it. Looking at them made him remember that Sunday on the school grounds. Between finishing practice and eating. Sakaeguchi had unlaced them and crouched at the step into the dugout. He shook the dirt and dust gently, meticulously out. Commented that they were dirty and would need a wash. Abe touched a finger to the instep, lifted it and rubbed it against his thumb. The chalky residue was fine, and it stained his fingertips orange.

He forced himself to straighten and shoulder his bag. His finger tingled oddly. Once he had righted himself he turned, and he stood like that until Sakaeguchi returned.

“...Oh,” was the first thing Sakaeguchi said when he reentered the room. He had only looked at Abe long enough to notice that he was standing, that he was holding his bag. Then his gaze slid to the floor. “You’re leaving.” He cleared his throat. “Okay. Let me—let me walk you out.”

To tell the truth, Abe was unsure. Parts of his brain lurched into motion with urgency, trying to piece together what he wanted to say, or do. But when Sakaeguchi walked out of his room, Abe followed him. Down the hall to the doorway. He crouched at the shoe cupboard, took his time tying his laces. Bought time.

“I’ll go,” Abe said, apropos of nothing. “I’ll go to your games.”

“What?”

“Did you know,” he said, “that we don’t have much data on Hatogaya. Two game’s worth. That’s it. I suppose our coach doesn’t think it’s a worthwhile investment of our time. But I disagree. It’s an oversight. A big oversight. Better for us to be prepared than caught off-guard. Next month you could end up with some decent infielders. I read online that most elementary schoolers don’t think right, because their brains are too small at that age. Some of them may think playing with a team like Hatogaya is an achievement, and they may even be _good_. Having a history of data on your team available would be useful. In case you became actual contenders at some point. So what you said. About no one going to watch your games. I would. When I could.” He pulled his laces into a tight knot, his own words ringing in his ears. They sounded childish even to him, but he stood up and faced Sakaeguchi shamelessly. He said, “For the sake of thoroughness. It’s what a catcher does.”

Sakaeguchi’s expression was pinched, drawn. “That’s not the only reason I’m quitting. It’s a lot more complicated than that. You know that. I told you, it’s—”

“Let it be for now,” Abe blurted out. “That’s what your mother says, and what you told me—the day before the practice game. I remembered. And I did it—I focused on other things instead of bringing up his sloppy breaking balls again. I’ve been meaning to tell you. It didn’t accomplish anything—I think it may have given Motoki-san ideas about me letting the leading issue go for good, and he took the opportunity to comment on my ‘nutrition’ or whatever—but he was...more receptive. If I let it slide a few more times I could probably trick him into taking me seriously.”

“Abe,” Sakaeguchi said wearily. “Why do you ca—”

“You should do it too. Take your own advice, Sakaeguchi. This isn’t—it isn’t something you can change. There’s no reason for it. You’re scared, but that’s all. That’s not the reason to stop yourself from playing. Not now. You can only play the way you want to if you keep playing. It’s ridiculous to think otherwise, and—”

“I don’t want to,” said Sakaeguchi, and the certainity in his voice was what forced Abe’s mouth shut. “When I think about my mom not being there to watch me play ever again—” He sucked in a breath and turned his head away. After two or three shuddering inhales and exhales, he went on, “When I think about—” his voice shook “—that. It makes me wonder why I’m playing at all. If it could ever mean the same thing, or it would just be habit forever. Because I’ve been playing for so long, and that wouldn’t be the right reason—not when….” Tears spilled out the corners of his eyes. “Not when….”

Abe looked away. He would have wanted that if it were him. But he could not avoid hearing his hitched breaths, his gasps for air. Those he bore the sound of, and fought back the dreadful, mirrored pressure behind his eyes, the trembling contortions of his chin. He bit his lip until he was sure the raw skin there had split. He was unsure how much time it had been, but refused to let the thought take occupancy in his thoughts. He would stand there. He would bear it. It was the least he could do. What he owed him. 

Finally his breathing evened out again. Abe shut his eyes, and then he opened them, and then he looked back. Sakaeguchi was drying himself off with the sleeve of his hoodie. He was red-eyed, the skin around them inflamed. His face was blotchy. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice empty save for a threadbare contrition. Still sincere despite the roughness of his voice. Despite how he wasn’t looking at him while he spoke. “I really am. It was unfair of me to tell you about all this. It was my mistake. I really did have fun hanging out with you, and I want—I hope you can believe that, but this...this isn’t what I wanted either.”

Since he heard the apology he had been holding out his hand. Not out of his own accord. Purely reactionary, almost instinctive. Seeing it in the air between them, fingers reaching, was what made him realize that he was trembling. Trembling, as he stood before Sakaeguchi in the doorway, but when he heard him finish his whole arm jerked, then fell limp at his side. He bowed his head. Looked away again. His body stiffened, and was still. In that moment it felt like he would never know anything but stillness again.

He said, “Okay. I know.”

— . . . —

When he finally slid into bed that night he found no comfort in it. No matter how much he flopped and turned, his body cumbersome and heavy with exhaustion, he could not find an outlet for his restlessness. It could have been hours of this, before he leaned off the side. Patted his nightstand searchingly until his fingers bumped into what he was looking for.

With phone in hand he navigated to its phonebook.

He could spend the entire night imagining the what else he could have said to no avail. None of it mattered. When the door closed between them there was a skewed finality to it. It was the one-sidedness of the gesture that ought to have irked him now. Yes. It should have. He waited for it, but did not feel the emotion come. His finger stayed atop the delete key, but did not press down. It would have been a futile gesture anyway.

As was this one, in all likelihood. 

He did it anyway.

>   
>  **11:07 PM**  
>  **TO:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** No Subject
> 
> Just thought I should make myself clear: it’s true that I would not have said yes if you had told me you were planning to stop playing, but now that it’s all already happened I’m not angry it did happen.
> 
> -Abe Takaya

  
He sent it. Waited for a while, even, before the profound stupidity of waiting dawned on him. At this hour. After how they’d left it. He bit the inside of his cheek. Stared morosely at the screen. Scrolled to his sent folder, reread the message. It was, he found, nearly incomprehensible.

As an addendum, he keyed in:

>   
>  **11:10 PM**  
>  **TO:** Sakaeguchi  
>  **SUBJECT:** No Subject
> 
> I mean the way it turned out is something I’m disappointed about. I’m not happy that you want to quit baseball and that it was me that helped you reach that decision. But I don’t regret everything about our acquaintanceship. Again just to be clear.
> 
> -Abe Takaya

  
Four rereads left him with the impression that it was much more salient than the last. After sending it he navigated back to his contact information. He looked at the two characters for his family name. Traced their lines with his gaze. The house had long been silent, but he strained his ears to hear something, anything. _Don’t pity me_ , Sakaeguchi had all but begged him in the kitchen. It went unsaid then, but in the silence of his own room he heard it. Abe closed his eyes.

Do you think I did? he wanted to say. I never felt that way. Not once. I know that because I wouldn’t want it either. When you saw all the bruises I got from catching Motoki-san’s pitches that was the last thing I wanted you to do. I wanted you to get it. Or act like you did even if you really didn't. But you didn’t say anything. So I won’t. It’s what I owe you in return. Whatever I’ve felt—whatever it is that’s happened—it was never that. And that’s why I told you to keep playing. Why I took it that way when you told me. Because I—

The glare of the phone dimmed, and he pressed a key to keep it lit without opening his eyes. From behind his eyelids it seemed like a burst of orange light.

When he opened them again he found the cursor blinking in the name field. He keyed in two more characters: Yuuto. With his thumb he depressed the key, and saved the change. His sight unfocused. The display blurred. He found himself imagining how Sakaeguchi spent the week and a half he’d stayed away from practice, keeping it a secret from everyone. In the convenience store, reading manga. Playing pinball or minesweeper in the computer lab. All the while with his duffel bag slung across his shoulders, so no one in his family would suspect him before he was ready to face them. It was hard to imagine. Ten days. Split between those dreary spaces. 

Because he could hardly see what he was doing he tapped in something he could not have before, for his bleary eyes and his delirious exhaustion, and sent it.

>   
>  **11:15 PM**  
>  **TO:** Sakaeguchi Yuuto  
>  **SUBJECT:** No Subject
> 
> I’m glad I did.
> 
> -Abe Takaya

  
How he ended up falling asleep, with his cell phone in hand and the day’s events a weight on his chest, he did not know. But he woke to dawn’s grayish light casting the window in dim relief. The rest of the room dark and silent. His alarm had yet to ring. It would not for another twenty-three minutes. When he pressed a key on his phone, squinting against the overbright artificial glare, there were no new messages. The message to ‘Sakaeguchi Yuuto’ in his sent folder confirmed that yesterday had not been some kind of dream.

Outside a car drove past. He let out a stale breath, set his phone face down on the pillow. He had forgotten to plug the charger in. Even if he did right then the battery was unlikely to last the whole day. Not that it mattered. He was careful on his way to and from practice. He wouldn’t need it. He never did.

Down the hall there came the clatter of pans in the kitchen, his father’s booming voice a low echo coming from downstairs. Abe stared at the ceiling, thinking of nothing. Then he pushed off the covers, and swung his feet over the side.

— . . . —

On Friday morning his mother stopped him on his way out the door. After serving them breakfast she had taken her plate and ensconced herself in the guest room, which she often took occupancy in whenever she had some kind of project that demanded ‘peace and serenity, free from the baseball-related histrionics of everyone else in this household.’ Her words. He hadn’t seen her look up from whatever it was she was doing as he walked by, but she called out to him all the same.

“Taka,” she said leisurely from the guest room, “the weather report projected that it’s going to get warmer this afternoon.”

“Huh.”

“Yes, ‘huh.’ So it may not be the best idea to wear that jacket. It’ll be too hot. You’ll just put it inside your bag with all your equipment, and it’ll get wrinkled and stinky. I did everyone’s laundry on Monday, like usual.” The sewing machine started up. Over its rapid clunking, she continued, “If you need it for some reason before next week, then you’ll have to wash it yourself.”

“Okay. Thanks,” Abe said, and left.

By midday it was just as she’d said. Standing in full sunlight was bearable at first, but quickly made him feel smothered beneath his jacket. It wasn’t that it had gotten any hotter, really, but that the wind had died down some. The breeze came infrequent. When it glided by, it did without bearing any of the cool air it had for weeks. There was no need to huddle up against it at all. Warmth was in abundance. Winter had come unstuck from the spring air at last.

The sum of Abe’s concerns, as he made his way to the bike racks, was two-fold. First that he would appear disproportionately exhausted by the time he arrived at the practice grounds for all the unmitigated heat, and in that state would draw coach’s or Shinohara’s concern as surely as a magnet, at which point they would well-meaningly excuse him from running drills or, god forbid, his time in the bullpen, chiding him about wearing a sweater in the first place, or not taking it off, and of course Haruna would let them do it without saying anything, because he would be perfectly content with skipping a bullpen session.

He pursed his lips, and turned his cap around to shade his eyes. They would have to work on that.

The second amounted to how he could prevent all of this from transpiring while keeping his jacket on. He decidedly swiftly on unzipping it, then, on second thought, rolled both sleeves up above his elbows. 

Beyond that, he had little opportunity to consider what other preventative measures he could take, because Sakaeguchi was standing by the very bike racks Abe had left his bike at that morning. It was too late to do anything about it. No time to get out of sight until Sakaeguchi left. By the time Abe noticed him the crowd around him was thinning, and he was but a few feet away. He had enough time to feel a nip of embarrassment at the memory of the messages he’d sent, and beneath that an undercurrent of incredulity at how familiar he looked—the easy way he’d picked him out in his vision, and known it was him—before Sakaeguchi looked his way and noticed him.

Neither of them moved. Abe expected Sakaeguchi would at any moment. It was only a matter of time...even though the moment was not forthcoming. He chanced a confused glance at Sakaeguchi. His eyes took enough of him in, before passing him jerkily over to squint at a cloud, to note that he had his hands on the handlebars his own bike. Had been looking down at his own feet; had his duffel bag hanging from his shoulder. None of those broadcasted the slightest intention to move. Not any time soon.

Abe took a deep breath. There was nothing to do but move forward. Retrieve his bike. He’d be late otherwise. So he did, and when he undid the lock and lifted it off, he turned with the full expectation that Sakaeguchi would have gone by then. 

He hadn’t.

It was so thoroughly unexpected that Abe looked at him then. Really looked at him, and did so in a way that made him feel, ludicrously, like it was the first time he ever had. There was a sun-warmed flush to his cheeks. Not at all blotchy like the last time he’d seen him, but robust. That was the word that came to mind. The kind of color one would get after stretching in the sun. A proper, warmed-up glow. It looked good on him. In the full light of the sun overhead his hair had regained that chestnut tone. Their gazes skittered across one another twice, but did not catch. After a moment of this, Abe was horrified to realize that Sakaeguchi was opening his mouth.

The first thing Sakaeguchi said to him was, “Why’re you wearing a jacket?”

His body tensed. “It was cooler this morning,” he said defensively.

It was nothing short of a surprise when he nodded, as though that was a perfectly sound reason for it. He tugged at the collar of his t-shirt a little awkwardly. “Look, Abe…”

“I just wanted to get my bike,” Abe cut in, already certain of what the tail-end of Sakaeguchi’s statement would be. “To get to practice. I didn’t mean to...bother you, or whatever. You were standing right there, and my bike was over there, so—”

“I know,” said Sakaeguchi quickly. “I know that. I recognized it. That’s why I’m here, actually. I was waiting for you.”

That was news to him. He drew himself up, but didn’t reply.

“Abe, um. Listen,” Sakaeguchi said. “Do you think we can talk?”

“I have to get to practice.”

“That’s fine. We can’t really talk here anyway. Besides, I think I’m heading the same way you are.”

“Our practice grounds aren’t in the same direction as your house,” Abe pointed out.

Sakaeguchi’s gaze was fixed. “It’s good that I’m not going home, then.”

“If you want to,” said Abe under his breath, “then that’s fine. It’s your own choice.”

The trip to the grounds took about twenty minutes on foot. Riding shaved anywhere from five to seven minutes off that, which gave him about ten minutes to spare before practice started. After this delay, he would almost certainly be late.

Still, they walked it. 

Abe stared directly ahead, kept his thoughts to himself. Tension knitted his shoulders together. He could feel the impact of each step reverberate in them, up the length of his body. Beside him Sakaeguchi was quiet, contemplative. The sidewalk wasn’t wide enough so that they could walk their bikes side to side, so the front wheel of Sakaeguchi’s spun along parallel to his, with Sakaeguchi himself not next to him, precisely, but near to. Near enough. Neither of them spoke. There was the chatter of those of their schoolmates taking this route, and underlying that the clacking of their bicycle spokes, and soon that was all there was left.

A long minute or so passed in silence. Then Sakaeguchi cleared his throat. “I—uh. I got your messages. The ones you sent Wednesday night.”

“You did,” Abe repeated, inflectionless. The dread came, numbly. Like spark among wet kindling. It did not catch. Only glowed, far-off. His fingers tensed on the handlebars, bracing himself. Readying for whatever came.

“I read them too. Sorry I haven’t replied, but—I just thought about them for a while, and when I figured out what I wanted to say I thought it would be better to say it to you in person.”

He imagined the shape of Sakaeguchi’s mouth, the trajectory of his gaze.

“Yesterday we all went to go visit my mom, and when I told her about what I decided she—she told me what you did, pretty much.” His voice was light. The sound of it very nearly gave Abe pause. “Not in the words you used, but what she said was really similar. She told me I shouldn’t give up something I like doing because things are changing, and that not all changes were bad, even if the one that caused them is. She said that I should give it a chance first, to see if my like for it changed too.” There was a pause, accompanied by a prickling warmth on Abe’s nape. The skin there went sensitive. Got improbably hotter. “She made me promise I would give it a chance before making a decision.”

“So you’re….”

“Yeah. I’m going back to practice today,” said Sakaeguchi. He laughed a little. “I really didn’t have a choice, because my mom and my dad and my siblings all ganged up on me and made me promise, but—it’s for real this time.”

Abe came to stop. In truth he had wanted to since hearing ‘give it a chance,’ but could only bring himself to right then. When he turned, it was with much less difficulty, the logistics of keeping his bike from teetering over aside. His surroundings whirled, and there was Sakaeguchi standing just behind him. He was holding his bike upright too, but upon seeing Abe turn to face him he nudged at its kickstand with his foot. Let it stand on its own.

“You,” said Abe. His arm was still levered out behind him. He shut his eyes. “What your mother said. That was what I wanted to say. What I meant.”

“I know. Or at least I realized that after thinking about it for a little while. Reading your messages helped with that too.” 

Abe heard him take a step forward, the tap of his sole against the pavement almost intentionally loud. An announcement. When he opened his eyes Sakaeguchi was leaning forward. He put his hand on the bicycle seat, beside Abe’s, and held it until he kicked the stand into place. Their fingers were close enough to feel the sense suggestion of each other. Together they let the bike lean against it. 

“There we go,” Sakaeguchi said, and stood upright.

“Thanks.”

Finally, their eyes caught one another, and held. “Abe,” he said almost gently, “this doesn’t mean I still won’t make that decision after I make up my mind. It’s just a chance, is all.”

“I know that.”

The look Sakaeguchi gave him then reminded him of the day they practiced together. It was the same one he had on his face when he said, _You really are a good catcher_ , and meant it without having any proof to substantiate it.Now he said, “And you’re okay with that?”

Was he? Truth be told, he didn’t know. Hearing him say what he had about giving it another chance was vaguely discomfiting. Not at all the relief that had accompanied his ideations, cold with regret, of what would have happened if Sakaeguchi had never voiced his decision to him. Had never thought to come to it at all. He scuffed his the toe of his shoe against a sidewalk crack. Thinking back he could not explain the reason for his anger even then. It defied explication. Sakaeguchi was not on his team. His decision to quit hardly affected him. He told himself that now.

So Abe said, “It’s your decision,” and almost left it at that. But after a moment he added, “I want you to—to...” and could only let it hang there, unfinished. At a loss.

Yet Sakaeguchi was smiling. It curved his lips slowly, with a strange relief Abe could not fully parse. “I’m glad,” he said, scratching at the back of his head. “Maybe...maybe the next time we have another test we could practice together again? Or even when we don’t.” He bit his lip. “That—this probably sounds weird, but it felt different from practicing with the team. Didn’t it? Or was it just me?”

“No. No, it was. It was—different. Much more...productive.”

Sakaeguchi barked out a laugh. It had a whole sound to it, and Abe had to take a startled step backwards. His back ran into the bike’s back tire. “You—you’re exactly right! That was it. It’s—it’s just too much of a productive studying method to let go of, isn’t it? Especially now that we’re going to be second years soon.”

“Yes,” said Abe. “Exactly. I’m glad you see things that way.”

“So am I,” Sakaeguchi replied. “I’m glad too.”

They smiled at one another, in that moment.

Soon after they remembered the time, and where they were headed, and turned away to grab their bikes’ handlebars. They resumed walking at a less brisk pace, both fully aware that they would be late. There was no helping it now.

“Though I may hold you to your offer, you know,” Sakaeguchi said abruptly, “to come watch my games. My mom asked if I could bring her some video tapes, so...well, maybe you could give me a copy? I could show that one to her. Besides, it’d be cool to have you there. Maybe after we could watch _Die Another Day_?”

“That would be...unorthodox...but I could. As long as it stays with you. And only you. Don’t share it with your teammates. My game commentary is only for teammates.”

“I won’t, I won’t!” Sakaeguchi assured him roundly, though even before hearing it Abe was already planning to take two tripods. Coach kept a camera in his office; he could ask to borrow that one and take his own. With one he would film the game as usual, but he could train the other, following a parent’s sightline, onto the dugout. Or the stands. Wherever Hatogaya put its reserves. Yes. That was exactly where he would point it.

“You know,” said Abe, scratching at the sweaty patch of skin where his rolled-up sleeves rubbed against the crook of his elbow, “you should really compensate me for this. With, say...some of the passwords for Hatogaya’s forums.”

“Oh really.”

“Yes. I would ask for insider’s data directly from you, Sakaeguchi, but I’m willing to negotiate. In case betraying Hatogaya directly would make you feel guilty.”

Sakaeguchi gave no answer for a moment. He stopped walking; Abe did too. Sakaeguchi said, “You know you could just…” his hands made a rounded gesture on either side his midsection “...take it off and tie it around your waist, right?” He was, Abe noted, indicating his jacket. “If I were the one wearing that, I’d be dead by now. Aren’t you hot?”

His fingers stilled on his elbow. Of course. It was an ingenious solution. His fingers gripped the sleeve, and pulled it back down. He let the bike line against his side, and did the same for his right arm with his left hand. Spread his arms back, as though in a warm-up stretch or wind-up motion. Shook his shoulders until the jacket came loose. With the sleeves in both hands he wound it around his waist. Cinched it tight.

“Now _tell me_ that doesn’t feel like the best thing in the world,” Sakaeguchi was saying. Gloating really, if you asked Abe.

“It’s okay,” he said noncommittally. He wasn’t expecting it when Sakaeguchi popped his fist lightly against his shoulder, or when his hand lingered there for a second or two afterwards. Abe stuck his hand in his pocket, saying, “—really, Sakaeguchi, it’s only a fair exchange. You just don’t know. Come on—” when his fingers brushed something in there. It felt crinkled and papery, though it wasn’t until he’d pulled it out that he realized what it was.

In his hand, the ink almost completely washed out by the washing machine, was the list he’d made. He had forgotten to take it out of his pocket; his mother must have washed it along with the pants at the beginning of the week. He stared at it as if from a distance. The characters were almost completely unrecognizable. If he squinted, he could make out CRAFTY ENOU—O AVOID LE—RDS SLIP. Beyond that, it was unsalvageable. Something twitched at the edges of his lips, unbidden. He let the expression take shape.

“What’s that you're smiling at?” Sakaeguchi asked.

“Nothing important,” said Abe, and let it fall.

**Author's Note:**

>   * The poem Abe and Sakaeguchi practice reciting is a tanka that features prominently in Shinkai Makoto's _Kotonoha no Niwa_ ( _The Garden of Words_ ), which inspired the breakthrough that made this piece possible.
>   * Details about Sakaeguchi's middle school history were either derived from the canonical backstory that appears in Higuchi Asa's _[Chiisaku Furikabutte](http://v2012.mangapark.com/manga/chiisaku-furikabutte/c1-4/4)_ or wholly invented for the occasion. For example, while Sakaeguchi does consider quitting baseball for good after his mother passes away in the spring of his second year of middle school, little is known about his team except that it was, by his own admission to Mihashi, "[a weak team](http://www.mangahere.co/manga/ookiku_furikabutte/v02/c006/9.html)" in the Little Seniors. The name used for his team here, "Hatogaya," was invented. The same is true for "Shinei," the team Todakita plays the practice game with, and "Shinohara," the name used for Todakita's starting catcher.
>   * Much of the description of the Sakaeguchi residence was inferred from the brief shot we get of it in [an omake about the parents who didn't attend the Tosei game](http://www.batoto.net/read/_/18386/ookiku-furikabutte_v6_ch13-d-_by_raep-time/61).
>   * To my knowledge, Haruna Motoki has never refused to pitch because of a papercut, but he _did_ [refuse to throw a slider because he had a mosquito bite](http://www.mangahere.co/manga/ookiku_furikabutte/v03/c008/26.html)...so the papercut plot point didn't seem like too much of a stretch. I would have used the mosquito bite incident for my purposes here instead, but alas, my decision to set this during early springtime came back to bite me. Please don't hold it against him.
>   * All views articulated, expressed, and/or intimated by Abe Takaya in this story are not the author's, though I will admit to deriving a great deal of enjoyment and amusement from writing this spectacularly preposterous egg thief, whom I love dearly! That said, please take everything he said or thought with a grain of salt. He's not only _Abe_ , unreliable expositor extraordinaire, but Abe's _middle school incarnation_ , which—though yet unburdened by ~65% of the baggage the end of his partnership with Haruna leaves him lugging around and unwittingly bludgeoning Mihashi into codependence with—undoubtedly makes him all the more ridiculous. Since he's, you know, _a thirteen-year-old boy._
> 



End file.
